I (heart) faces contest!!!

I was on the way out the door today to run....I stretched...wrestled with my iPod to get it just right...and then I hear...THUNDER!  Sooooo, I headed back in the house and what's a girl to do all cooped up in a dark house with no kids?  Read blogs.  Friends blogs. Favorite blogs. New blogs...hence the contest I am entering!  I found this really cool blog called I (heart) faces

I really love taking pictures and have on occasion taken some cool (at least I think so!) face pics of my friends kids and of course my own and family!  This photo is of my sweet, spunky niece named Maggie.  We were at my parents house in Georgia and Maggie was riding in the golf cart and when it stopped I called her name and just snapped this picture.  I.LOVE.HER.EYES. in this picture...they are such a beautiful blue and I love the way her hair is all tossled from the fun cart ride she just got back from.  Just good 'ol summer time fun.

"I am submitting this photo into the www.iheartfaces.com Blurb Book photo contest. I am granting I ♥ Faces permission to use my photo in a printed version of a book for commercial use and possibly advertising of a photo book on both the Blurb and I ♥ Facesweb sites."

Happy Mothers Day/Happy Birthday!

This year we decided to combine holidays and instead of buying gifts we went to the JW Marriot for 2 days/1 night and then went to Disney for Todd's birthday...isn't it nice of Walt to give us free admission on our special day!  We had a fantastic time at the hotel!  We swam the entire time and what an amazing pool and lazy river we enjoyed!  I really didn't feel like I was only 30 minutes away from home...so very relaxing.  I will say it was stinkin hot...like 96 degrees hot!  We loaded up the sunscreen and still got a bit burned.  

Some dear friends sent us a special dessert cart for Todd's birthday and we were totally surprised when we came up for the night.  The kids were too much...drinking the milk from the bottle, trying all the different desserts...how fun!

Morgan and T.J. are in the pink and yellow tubes in the middle of the pic...

enjoying the lazy river

Awww...Todd and I!  Happy Bday/Mothers Day :)  Check out the awesome firepit behind us...

Polka dot piggy

Several years ago my friend and I started our own little business painting personalized piggy banks called "Grace & Baby Duck".  Isn't it the cutest name?!  When I was little, my mom used to call me Grace (mainly because I ran into EVERYTHING...walls, mailboxes, you name it!) and Rebecca's mom used to call her Baby Duck...so that is how we came up with the name.  We had a blast doing it together and had our banks in about 15 stores as far away as Texas!  It was fun while it lasted but eventually just got to be too much.  Rebecca and I still are very close friends...she actually went back to school and performs sonograms on OB patients now :)  But...I still get an occasional call now and then to paint a piggy bank...and have sort of created a new style with polka dots and a cute bow.  I LOVE polka dots and CUTE ribbon...and still LOVE to personalize and paint piggy banks!

I absolutely am crazy over this one with the pink and black...too darn cute!  (Thanks Allison for being my very best customer!!...I hope Avery loves her new bank!)

And off she goes...

My sweet girl is heading to Savannah, GA tomorrow for a mission trip on her Spring Break.  Can I just brag a minute?  I am so proud of her for sacrificing her time away from school to go and serve others.  She has spent the past five months every Sunday preparing for this trip.  Morgan is in the puppet group and she has had a ball learning puppets!!  They are going to a children's home to do puppets, sign language, drama and singing as well as hanging with the children and loving on them.  Each of the kids have prepared their testimony and will be sharing that throughout the trip.  I am just so grateful to God for her servants heart and willingness to go...and I just pray that her love for others and wanting to serve will just keep on increasing as she grows.  Thank you God for blessing us with Morgan Brooke and I can't wait until Thursday when she comes back to hear how Your love was shown in Savannah!

TEAM ELAINE

     "Team Elaine"

 These are all sweet friends that came together to show love and support to one amazing girl!  

Some sweet ladies at a church made Elaine this prayer quilt.  Every time someone prays for her a knot gets tied...we tied alot of knots that night!

What a blessing she is to me!!!

A beautiful purse from Tara Byrd

Well...there has not been much "redecorating, crafting or organizing" going on around here.  What's important is taking precedent and that would be taking time to help out my girl Elaine as she recovers from surgery and soon will start chemotherapy to treat her breast cancer.  So I would like to share some pictures of a very fun night we had last friday.  We had a PJ party and got to spoil the heck out of Elaine for the night :)  We had Thai Basil for dinner and an endless amount of yummy desserts and snacks...food is so good for the soul :)  She got a ton of gifts...yeah!  After opening up her goodies, we had a very special time of praying for her...God is good!  

On the way to the trash...now it's a treasure!

So I have had these wood pictures for a very LOOONNGG time.  In this house they were in my laundry room...because they just didn't go anywhere else in my house and probably really didn't go in my LR, but hey, I had them...might as well use them.  Anyhoo...I got on this kick to clean, reorganize and decorate the LR.  These pictures were going to just HAVE to go UNTIL...I had an idea...my very own idea!  And here it goes....I have selected the pics I want to cover this already and we are outside ready to go!
The photo was cut to fit the front of the picture already.  I had a couple really really cute pics of the kids left over that were PERFECT for this project!
Then I used some spray adhesive to have the photo adhere nicely to the wood picture.  

This is sort of the finished idea...except I want to paint the edges of the picture black and change the ribbon color.  I already had this black/white toile, but it's just too bland and needs some pop!  I am also very impatient and didn't have time to run to Michael's, so I went ahead and hung them for now.

Another new do...this is for Mandy since she has given up FB for lent!

So...I cut off about 4 inches (well, I didn't personally cut it...you know what I mean!).  The back is alot shorter and from the side the angle is very sharp.  I love it and will probably keep it up until I get bored and do something else!