Valentine's Day--The Good, the Bad, the Ugly

I think most women have a love/hate relationship with Valentine's Day. At least I do, so I generalize my feelings to most woman :)

One of my first real Valentine's Day celebrations involved a plastic swan vase with a couple of baby roses. It was from my first real boyfriend and I thought it was fabulous. I found out later his mom picked it out (we were in Junior High so that made sense, but I never really forgave him). After that, most of High School was disappointing year after disappointing year.

My worst Valentine's Day was in my early twenties. I had dressed up and prepared a nice dinner for my boyfriend. I had a special gift for him...don't really remember what it was but was probably football related.

A great idea from Pinterest.
"Open When" cards. Check out
http://www.pinterest.com/pin/225743000046399080/

He scarfed down dinner to leave and play ball with a friend. He had a couple of $2 boxes of chocolate from Walmart--one for me and one for his sister. His sister got the one that said something about love on it. Mine said "To a Special Friend." I remember this vividly...

We lived together. We'd been together for 5 years. 5 Y.E.A.R.S.

Needless to say, I realized then and there that we were not going to be together for much longer.

This Valentine's Day my husband and I are apart, but he flies in tomorrow and I know just seeing him will be the gift.

Though some cute baby roses in a fun animal shaped vase would go a long way. Just saying.

Take a Breath Already

Sometimes life moves at a snail's pace...and sometimes it feels like you are drinking from a fire hose. Such is life. 

The first thing I hung up
in our new home! Love Italy!

As many of you may know, life in our household has changed drastically since the last time I posted. Bug and I now live back in Colorado where we just closed on and moved into our new home. Honey is still in training and won't get to join us permanently for many months.

So with the move, the closing, the job search, the day care search, the snow, dog sitting, unpacking, figuring out which light switch belongs to which light, and being a single mom...life is moving at fire hose pace. 

As I started writing I thought to myself..."Just take a breath already and write."

Of course, right as I expanded my lungs the sleeping dog next to me farted. Such is life.

That all being said I am excited to start blogging again. I hope to be more consistent. I will do my best not to use this as a place to bitch, but no guarantees! I have a feeling the next several months will try me in ways I am not really ready to be tried so that will probably spill over here.

If nothing else I am sure many stories will come of it all and I will share them all with you!

Nursery's Ready...Come on Baby!

The final touches have been completed on Baby Gannon's Nursery...just in time for his due date, which is today...

Too bad he's not yet here to enjoy, but it gives me time to post the pictures!

So I know you've seen the paint job and the changing table makeover but there were two other major projects that we worked on: the mobile and the airplane picture. When you see them only one will actually look major, but I assure you the other one took forever too!

First, the mobile. This may not look like much but it took me pretty much all my pregnancy to complete as I am not all that craft-able without specific directions. Here is a link to the Pinterest mobile that started this obsession, but it didn't have templates or anything for me to go directly off of so I had a lot of improvising.

Honey drew me a template of a B-something or another plane. (No matter how hard I try to keep these planes straight I am doing a miserable job). He actually drew me 2 different ones, but doing both were leaps and bounds beyond my ability so we have all six of the same plane.

Overall I am really happy with it. Each plane is made of paper and balsa wood to make it more sturdy. And the little propellers really turn. In the end it probably cost less than $15 to make...not counting the gas of about 55 trips to hobby stores...but that is a whole other issue.

The other major project was inspired from this Pottery Barn picture on wood:

We really didn't want to spend $300 on it, but after I showed it to Honey he fell in love with the idea and got his heart set on having a B-17 on the wall because that was the plane his grandfather flew in the war.

So he found a wonderful gentleman on the internet that would let us use a photo he had, which we then tried to convert to 4 or 5 canvas panels.

Unfortunately, that proved VERY difficult because the size of the photo and the usual size of canvas panels we'd need and we gave up.

So I turned to again to the wonderful world of Pinterest. We found several pins on putting pictures on canvas but then found these great directions for transferring a picture to wood.

And here is how ours turned out...

Pretty amazing! It was a pretty time consuming process since it is like 6 feet long, but totally worth it. It probably cost about $50 for all the supplies, maybe not even that.  We just love it.

So here are a few shots of the whole room:

Now we just need the little guy to get here! Of course he will end up sleeping in our bedroom for the first couple of months, but I already love sitting in here to read so I am sure we will be spending a great deal of time in his nursery. 

It turned out just as I had hoped! 

My Manly-Man and His Candied Walnuts & Diaper Covers

For those of you who know my husband, he tends toward the manly-man side.

He loves guns. Hates musicals. Loves getting dirty. Hates the Kardashians. Loves wrestling with the dogs. Hates shopping for clothes.

Well the last couple of weeks he has had some time off so he's been very helpful around the house doing both manly things like making our toilet flush without the need to two hands and bicep muscles to push the lever down. And he has done more wifely duties like clean the oven and mop the floor so I don't have to on maternity leave. Let me just say here: I really married a keeper...I mean jackpot!!

Annnnnyway. Beyond these chores that I had added to his list, he also surprised me (and himself) with a couple of extra domestically cute actions...

Number 1: I came home from work last week to find him making candied walnuts.

Candied walnuts.

I have no idea what it even takes to candy a walnut because if I get to a recipe that calls for me to do that I immediately balk at the thought of an extra step and move right onto a new recipe. And to make it even better, he called it "easy" and "fun"!

And they were some pretty stinking good walnuts!

Number 2: He had a friend come over to watch a movie and pulled out the cloth diapers we had purchased earlier in the day to show off to his friend.

Mind you, this friend does not have kids...is not married even...is also more of a manly-man...and I swear did not ask anything about diapers to precipitate this show and tell.

Honey contends his friend did indeed ask about the diapers...but I'm not so sure. Honey did most of the picking out of cute diaper covers at the store and I think he was just very excited.

Again I tell you I hit the JACKPOT with him!! He is my cute manly-man and still all domestic!