Cleaning Up and Clearing Out

I never thought I'd use a "free day" pass from motherhood to clean and be happy about it, but that's just what hubby and I did today while the little guy was at his one-day-a-week-of-daycare. Lots of little things here and there get grimy and overlooked in the daily business of work and caring for a baby over the last year. We made a list of things to accomplish this summer,and I'm happy to report that I already crossed three off the list today! I always start with the easiest and most manageable things to feel highly successful..LOL!! Really yucky jobs come last on the list. One of the things I completed today was to scrub the grout on the kitchen countertops. Who ever thought of grout on a kitchen countertop???!! Someone who loves to clean, that's for sure!! All of you out there who have a solid marble countertop in your kitchen, go kiss it right now, because grout is such a bear!!

These are a few of the things I fantasize about having someday...notice the grout-free item first:

• a grout-free countertop and shower
• an icemaker as part of my refrigerator
• a refrigerator big enough to fit a full week's worth of food into it
• French doors anywhere, but somewhere, in the house
• a stainless steel sink (preferably a deep farmhouse style sink) instead of white enamel which always looks stained to me
• a built in console for the television with bookshelves
• great looking bookshelves that I could somehow make look way more visually appealing than the IKEA particle board ones that we currently have

That's about it...I don't think that's too much to ask for! Maybe someday....

For now, I will be happy in my clean little cozy house while looking at these beautiful flowers I picked up at the market yesterday morning...

Oops...I just realized I inserted these pics twice, but it's time to put Liam down to bed so it will have to post as is!

From Baby to Boy

Today marked my first really sentimental moment when I realized that Liam is not a baby anymore! He's been sporting something of a mullet these last couple of months since his baby hair grew out so much longer in the back than on the rest of his head. So...we headed over to Cuts for Little People and the sweetest gentleman named Marciano gave Liam his first haircut.

Afterwards it really hit me that he is now a little boy and not a baby. Here is Mr. Liam with his new hairdo...

What's not to love about a face like that?! (Good thing I have some experience with disciplining kids or I might never be able to say "NO" to that innocent little grin!)

A Sunny Father's Morning

Beautiful morning for honoring all the dads out there today! Daddy's wish was to take a hike at Los Penasquitos Canyon so that's what we did! It really is a beautiful place to walk with lots of little winding trails and places to have a picnic lunch. Liam loves to be a little monkey on daddy's back...

What a great time!! The bonus was that we discovered a PinkBerry nearby, which was our reward after the hike...yum!! New flavor this season..Salted Caramel...it doesn't get any better than that! Hope you're enjoying your weekend!!

More Birthday Fun

As promised...here are some more pics of pages 6 through 10...

Eating the birthday cake...yuuuummmmm!!!

Opening some presents...

Playing with one of his favorite gifts...

Enjoying the birthday balloons....

Birthday Fun

Summer is finally here (yeah!) so hopefully I will have a bit more time to post some of the things I've been working on. I finished this cute little 1st Birthday Boy book about a month ago, but I thought it was still worth sharing. The on-line class for this book can be found at Elizabeth Kartchner's new site Something Splendid. It's a super cute site with lots of fun projects to make! I changed mine up a bit by making the book slightly bigger and using actual envelopes inside of it instead of glassine bags. It was meant to be an envelope book of 10 envelopes. However, I made 5 envelopes and then 5 additional pages with layouts/photos on them.

This worked out to be the perfect mini book to document Liam's first birthday since I had so many photos it would have taken me forever to do layouts using all of them. Instead, I used a couple of photos and then grouped the rest by theme such as "Cake Eating", "Playing with Toys", "Birthday Memorabilia", etc. I was able to tuck his invitation in one of the envelopes along with some birthday party confetti and a napkin. The additional photos I just tucked inside each envelope by theme and was done...so easy!!

Here is the cover....I cut the monkey head out of one of the party plates.

(Sorry, skipped page one here...I'll share tomorrow)

Most of the paper and labels/stickers are from Crate Paper's Boy line that came out this spring. I will post pages 1 and 6 through 10 tomorrow. See you then!