Hat lovin Hannah style!!!

So, I apologize about the lack of posting yesterday, after all those crazy thunderstorms rolled through our area I was left without internet, or intermittent internet at the least. So, hopefully we are back up and running, but they are calling for more storms today, so hopefully I stay running...

After a gloriously quiet morning to myself spent organizing the bead/spare room(which it doesn't even look like I made a dent), Hannah decided she wasn't going to nap, so I figured what better way to tire her out then to take her outside and let her play with her sand and water table (which let me give you a quick review of that one - BUY ONE WITH A LID - unless you like slimy algae water - which I do not). So I changed her into her swimsuit, it was crazy humid and hot out, and slathered on the sunscreen and told her to go and get her hat so we could go outside.

Not quite the hat I had in mind, but I sure did have a good laugh. The things this girl comes up with never cease to amaze me. She is soo hilarious and she doesn't even know it yet.

Hope everyone is having an awesome Thursday!!

Amy

Mommy Needs a Nap!!

Well, sorry for being M.I.A yesterday, it was a crazy busy day, that I hoped would end earlier then it did, or start later then it did, or maybe include a nap for everyone involved, but that was not in the plans. But you'll hear all about my truly manic monday shortly....

To start off my weekend recap right Friday night I worked on some beading projects for an upcoming shower (on Monday), and ran some errands, getting groceries etc. Went to bed nice and early as we had to get up super early Saturday morning thanks in part to my genius hubby....

Saturday morning got up at 7am to head to town to get our brand new Dodge Journey serviced, it felt like it was always pulling to the right, so hubby felt it needed an alignment, and with only 1500km on it, it needed to be taken care of... So we headed into town, and my mom met us at the car dealership so we could do some shopping (again for the Monday shower). We went out for an amazing breakfast at Cora's (where Hannah LOVED french toast, so I can find a way to get some eggs into her...), and then got a crazy thunderstorm, and headed to the mall to check out the bride's registry's and secretly look for a dress to the wedding for me. I had found one I liked at Sears, but it's strapless, and I'm not loving that idea with a two year old, who is also the flower girl in the wedding, so I was looking for something equally nice, but not as high maintenance we'll say. So after checking out the bride's registry and discovering soo many things were discontinued on it, I decided to make up my own gift including some of my favorite household things. So I got her a Pizza Stone set, and a Starfrit Rotato (because they are AMAZING and really do peel a potato perfectly in 10 seconds), and a can opener I also love. I also made her an anklet for her wedding day that is made out of the same beads I am using to make her bridal parties jewelry. Then we hit up the dress stores. Le Chateau had amazing, gorgeous short(er) dresses, but they were sooo ridiculously priced I walked right out. I mean come on $179.95 for a knee length dress is a bit much. I had a budget of $50. We walked around the mall a little more and decided to head out to Winner's and Homesense to check out there selection, and as we were walking back to the exit door we stumbled upon an amazing sale at Suzy Shier. I managed to find not one but two dresses, and one was 40% off the regular price of $40.00 (the one I am wearing to the wedding - I so wish their website had a picture of it on it so I could show you all, you'll just have to stay tuned for the wedding), and the other one was 50% off 40.00, so for the price of the one dress I ordered from Sears I have two. The one I chose for the wedding fits me perfectly, and it's purple (the color of Hannah's sash on her flower girl dress so we'll look cute in pictures, afterall who knows if she'll ever be a flower girl again), and the other one is grey but it has sleeves, so it would be nice for a fall occasion or something, but I liked it and the price was right so I bought it too!! Eric enjoyed a movie while mom, Hannah and I shopped, we then went and picked up our new aligned car and headed home. Eric went over to the neighbours to help tile his backsplash and I hung out with Hannah.

Sunday Eric got called into work in the morning so we had a quick trip up there, and then came home and got ready for my dad's 59th birthday party that was happening here (and my camera died so I have no pics...). I BBQ'd ribs and made caesar salad and caesar potatoes and we had a really nice time. After supper Hannah wanted to walk down and see the ducks so we went for a short walk and fed them some bread. Hannah was so excited to show off her duckies, it was soo cute.

And then Monday happened... To start the day off I went to the wrong dr's apt, I thought I had physio, when I was supposed to be at massage (and I had my hair down not up so massage was going to ruin that). Then I had to quickly find Hannah some white sandals to wear to the bridal shower to go with her dress. Luckily Payless had some super cute ones, and I managed to get myself some cute ones for the wedding and a new purse soo, I suck at BOGO (buy one get one half off ). You see it didn't make sense to me to just by my $44.99 pair of shoes and then get half off Hannah's $12.99 pair of shoes when there was this gorgeous white purse calling my name and it was $39.99, so well worth the half off. So I buy all three... yep I went in for a $12.99 pair of shoes and left with $80 worth... I already said it I suck. Then I headed home to finish up the jewelry and get myself ready for the shower, and Ash and I attempted to head to the shower and then her car tire decided it wanted to unattach itself, so we ended up having to wait to get a tow and then headed to the shower. We met up with our mom first at Jack Astor's for a delicious dinner (we ordered sirloin steak off the kids menu... loldr's apt, I thought I had physio, when I was supposed to be at massage (and I had my hair down not up so massage was going to ruin that). Then I had to quickly find Hannah some white sandals to wear to the bridal shower to go with her dress. Luckily Payless had some super cute ones, and I managed to get myself some cute ones for the wedding and a new purse soo, I suck at BOGO (buy one get one half off ). You see it didn't make sense to me to just by my $44.99 pair of shoes and then get half off Hannah's $12.99 pair of shoes when there was this gorgeous white purse calling my name and it was $39.99, so well worth the half off. So I buy all three... yep I went in for a $12.99 pair of shoes and left with $80 worth... I already said it I suck. Then I headed home to finish up the jewelry and get myself ready for the shower, and Ash and I attempted to head to the shower and then her car tire decided it wanted to unattach itself, so we ended up having to wait to get a tow and then headed to the shower. We met up with our mom first at Jack Astor's for a delicious dinner (we ordered sirloin steak off the kids menu... lol). It was perfect. Then hit the shower after some last minute gift scrambling of Ash's behalf. Then we drove Ash home and got home and got home ourselves at 10pm, much later then anticipated and much later then a little girls 7:30 - 8:00 bedtime, and she wasn't sleeping on the way home but rather loudly talking. So I got changed, put on some laundry and attempted to start watching The Bachelorette, but was getting really pissy with Bentley, so I headed to bed. And that was my truly manic monday.

To add insult to injury I had a terrible night of sleep. My allergies were ridiculous and then we got a really bad and long thunderstorm just as I finally got to sleep, which woke Hannah up, with cries of "Mommy I scared". It was a super intense storm, but man could I ever use a nap...

Hope your weekend was less eventful

Amy

Book Club Fridays!! "Eat, Pray, Love" Book Review Journal Entry #1

I thought it would be fun to link up with Heather for Book Club Fridays!!

And the book I have chosen to review this week is "Eat, Pray, Love" by Elizabeth Gilbert

"At 32 years old, Elizabeth Gilbert was educated, had a home, a husband, and a successful career as a writer. However, she was unhappy in her marriage and often spent the night sleeping on her bathroom floor. After separating from her husband and initiating a divorce, which he contested, she embarked on a rebound relationship which continued for some time but did not work out, leaving her devastated and alone.
Afterwards, while writing an article on yoga vacations in Bali, Gilbert met a ninth-generation medicine man who told her she would one day come back and study with him. After finalizing her difficult divorce, Gilbert spent the next year traveling around the world. The trip was paid for in advance with a book deal from the publisher.
She spent four months in Italy, eating and enjoying life ("Eat"). She spent three months in India, finding her spirituality ("Pray"). She ended the year in Bali, Indonesia, looking for "balance" of the two and found love ("Love") in the form of a dashing Brazilian factory owner." - via

I have got to admit this book kind of drove me crazy. It had some really, really amazing parts to it, seemingly mashed in with a lot of long descriptions of Italy or the various places she traveled to. But the amazing parts did make it worthwhile, and let me tell you I had high hopes for the movie being an abbreviated version of the book (as they wouldn't have to spend all kinds of time describing Italy, as it would be set in Italy), however, wrong again...

Here are some of the excerpts that I did love though, and some of my thoughts on how they reflect on my life, and what they meant to me:

"Oh, but it wasn't all bad, those few years.... Because God never slams a door in your face without opening a box of Girl Scout cookies (or however the old adage goes), some wonderful things did happen to me in the shadow of all that sorrow." - page 45

I think that this excerpt is sooo very true, retrospection does tend to taint things, and looking back, new experiences often make previous bad experiences not seem so bad, and in some ways can even make them a good thing, and at the very least an opportunity to learn and grow. For Elizabeth, in the wake of a series of bad failed relationships, she really came into her own in the midst of her personal tragedy. Elizabeth grew into herself as they say. I've been through some pretty horrible stuff in my day, and all of that pales in comparison to the birth of my daughter, something truly amazing and beautiful. And while it was a struggle to get to have her she is a miracle, and a true gift. I had soo many demons to fight in the years leading up to her conception, and then birth (a whole new set of struggles), but the fight of my life has led me to her, and what a gift she is. She reminds me everyday as I pick myself up off the floor that it really is going to be okay in the end. And she finds a way to make light of something that she doesn't even know she's making easier for me. She just is.

"My sense of helplessness was overwhelming. What I wanted to do was pull some massive emergency brake on the universe, like the brakes I'd seen on the subways during our school trip to New York City. I wanted to call a time out, to demand that everybody just STOP until I could understand everything. I suppose this urge to force the universe to stop in its tracks until I could get a grip on myself might have been the beginning of what my dear friend Richard from Texas calls my 'control issues.' Of course, my efforts and worry were futile. The closer I watched time, the faster it spun, and the summer went by so quickly that it made my head hurt, and at the end of everyday I remember thinking, 'Another one gone,' and bursting into tears." page 255

That first part of the excerpt really spoke to me, as I was struggling adjusting through my life after the accident, I really did want to make time stop. It was as if the hits just kept coming, and I was floating along, seeking answers to questions I didn't understand why I was asking, and couldn't begin to comprehend what magnitude my injuries would have not only on me, but on the people around me that loved me and were watching me struggle, and try to come into my own, or get back up and fight. The trouble was I was fighting myself, and had been blindsided, and didn't know where the next hit was going to come from. The medical field, which I normally wouldn't subject myself to, but I was without a choice and literally at their mercy, was failing me big time and at that rate yet again. And then everyone's life seemed to go one without me, friends started families, jobs were filled, life kept moving for everyone but me, I was trying to claw my way back into my own old life, but didn't even have a shred of it to hold onto. I didn't understand how this could happen? why is it happening to me? why do I need this procedure? what do you mean you can't do anything? how was I to make decisions in the midst of all this? was I even capable of making a decision? I really needed one of those emergency brakes Elizabeth was desperately seeking. But eventually you get it, you get a grip, you become capable of holding more then one thing in your head at a time, it's almost like you acclimatize to your own new life.

"...She says that people universally tend to think that happiness is a stroke of luck, something that will maybe descend upon you like fine weather if you're fortunate enough. But that's not how happiness works. Happiness is the consequence of personal effort. You fight for it, strive for it, insist upon it, and sometimes even travel around the world looking for it. You have to participate relentlessly in the manifestations of your own blessings. And once you have achieved a state of happiness, you must never become lax about maintaining it, you must make a mighty effort to keep swimming upward into that happiness forever, to stay afloat on top of it. If you don't, you will leak away your innate contentment. It's easy enough to pray when you are in distress but continuing to pray even when your crisis has passed is like a sealing process, helping your soul hold tight to its good attainments... I'm putting this happiness in a bank somewhere, not merely FDIC protected but guarded by my four spirit brothers, held there for insurance against future trials in life. This is a practice I've come to call 'Diligent Joy'. As I focus on Diligent Joy, I also keep remembering a simple idea my friend Darcey told me once - that all the sorrow and trouble of this world is caused by unhappy people. Not only in the big global Hitler-'n'-Stalin picture, but also on the smallest personal level. Even in my own life, I can see exactly where my episodes of unhappiness have brought suffering or distress or (at the very least) inconvenience to those around me. The search for contentment is, therefore, not merely a self-preserving and self-benefiting act, but also a generous gift to the world. Clearing out all your misery gets you out of the way. You cease being an obstacle, not only to yourself but to anyone else. Only then are you free to serve and enjoy other people. " - page 427-428

I LOVED this excerpt, and I think it is so very true, soo many people sit back and wait for happy to come to them, well they will be waiting a LONG LONG time. To be happy is work, and some of the work isn't easy, but the harder you work the sweeter the reward. You really get the feeling that it's paid off. And, in order to help preserve the happiness around you, it would be amazing if each person took responsibility for their own happiness, not relying on their partner or the universe to make them happy. It's unreasonable, and stealing someone elses happiness does nothing more then make two miserable people. Focus on the positive, and strive to see it in every day situations, and when it's not there create it. Invite it in, host it readily, and nurture it. Because the second you stop, poof it's gone. And finding it again is a real process.

Stay tuned for the second part of this review. What was your opinions of this book? or movie?

Have a great weekend!!

Amy

DIY Dining Room Chair Makeover!!

So, as I have alluded to in previous posts, I decided (rather quickly) to re-upholster my dining room chairs. They are our everyday chairs, as we have a large great room which encompasses our dining area, kitchen and family room (aka "great room"), so you see them everyday. And everyday for the last year I have been reminded that those chairs need to be recovered. You see this very lovely cat, Gizmo (who we had to say good bye to this time last year, as he was sick and had lost bladder control, in addition to peeing blood), did a number on our chairs. No, lucky for us he didn't pee on them, but he had this problem with his back claws (he was front declawed for this very reason), he didn't know how to put his back claws in, so I have poke holes in all my furniture, especially my dining room chairs, as he loved to chill on them. Hiding in plain view we'll say.


Gizmo relaxing in the sun at our old house in our bay window seat


So, on Saturday, while Hannah napped and Eric was helping his grandparents I went and found myself a screwdriver and the staple gun and set to work on revamping my chair covered (unannounced to my hubby - boy was he thrilled when he got home and saw me operating the staple gun - let's just say there have been previous disaster with that thing.... I can never remember which end the staple comes out of.... pathetic I know). Anyways, a couple of weeks ago I was perusing fabric.com and found a fabric I LOVED, and although the shipping to Canada isn't that great, after looking at local stores and finding nothing that compared, or that I even liked, I decided to bite the bullet and clicked order. It took just over a week to get here, and I wasn't planning on doing it right away, but then I had some time to myself Saturday afternoon, and thought what the heck, what have I got to lose. This is a shot of the fabric we chose along with the before of the chair pad, you'll notice the nice poke holes:

And here's a shot of our chairs before:

And this is how I did it:

1. Lay out the fabric to establish the size of the piece you need to cut, be sure to cut it large enough to generously wrap over the edges of the chair (I had three inches on each size which may have been slight overkill, but I was also working with the potential for a large margin of error LOL)
2. Unscrew chair pads from chair frame, I imagine a drill would have been handier for this, but my hubby had his with him.
3. I was also covering my chairs in clear vinyl over the cotton fabric I selected as I have a two year old and we all know how messy they are. So I also had to measure out the vinyl fabric and cut it into squares, but if you don't have children feel free to skip this particular step.
4. Since I was using a cotton fabric, I had to iron all of the squares I had cut out prior to putting them on the chair, as I'm sure you can see they were quite wrinkly. Ironing was a breeze though, not how I remember ironing ever going, so that only took about 2 mins a square, and I did one square at a time, so were all freshly pressed.
5. Now the fun part begins, stapling the fabric to the chair, although I am proud to say I only had one staple go in backwards (because I was holding the staple gun the wrong way), so I started at the back of the chair pad (the part that tucks into the frame of the chair - figuring if I screwed up it would be well hidden), and pulled the fabric REALLY tight, and stapled in the center then the sides. Then I stapled the opposite end of the chair pad (where your legs go), again holding it really tight, leaving the corners to be dealt with at the end, because they are trickier. So then I stapled the center of the sides, and got to work on the corners. This part would probably be easier with two people I've decided, but since my hubby wasn't home, and may or may not have supported my fabric selection I decided to continue on my own rather then wait til he got home. So, I held with one hand really tight on the corner and stapled with the other, and just continued along the fabric working out the wrinkles as best I could. Then I repeated the whole process with the vinyl, which I'll tell you was a lot trickier then the cotton, and a lot thicker too. Repeat this whole process six times (as I have six chairs).
6. The next step is re-attaching the chair pads to the chair, and this is where I hit a hurdle, you see, I couldn't get the screwdriver to drive the screws through the freshly installed vinyl, so I had to wait for Eric to get home and use the drill. Which worked like a charm, although he wasn't thrilled (as I suspected he wouldn't be with my fabric selection, however, he doesn't have the best taste when it comes to home decorating...

So, the whole process took about 2 hours, give or take, but all in all the time of a two year olds nap. She woke up just as Eric started the drill, go figure, but kinda perfect timing. So here's the finished product:

Looks great eh? We have been looking for a storage ottoman for quite sometime and I had seen one I loved over that was similar to this fabric (but was way too much money and my hubby nixed it right away), so I figured I'd incorporate it my own way, and within a reasonable budget. Here's a breakdown of how much this cost me:

Supplies:

• staple gun and staples (which I needed a lot of...) - free already owned
• screwdriver (again already owned)
• drill (already owned)
• 4 yards of fabric with shipping (and I didn't need 4 I totally could have got three but now I can make some throw pillows or something) $56.00
• Roll of vinyl which was three yards and I needed every inch of it $15.96

So the total cost of the project was $71.96, which divided by six chairs is only $11.99, which I think is pretty good, and I love the finished product!!! What do you guys think?

Amy

And this is my Thrilling Thursdays link up!! So be sure to head over to Paisley Passions and see what everyone else has made today!!

What I Am Loving Wednesday and Wandering Wednesday!!

So, yet again this week I am linking up with Jamie, at This Kind of Love, for her What I Am Loving Wednesdays, and I gotta say, I am loving a lot these days...

First and foremost, I am LOVING little miss Hannah Jane, she is loving this weather, and has been in a great mood for the past couple of days (I'm sure because we have spent soo much time outside), and as an added what I'm loving, that this weather is forecasted to stay for the next little while, right through the weekend.

I am loving this super cute swimsuit and floppy hat on Hannah.

I am also loving that she is all about her daddy these days, up until lately it was mommy mommy mommy, and I loved it, but she really didn't seem to want much to do with Eric, which made me sad, so I am loving that everything these days is Daddy.

I am also loving that I am almost done sorting my newest selection of beads, so soon, very soon, you will all be invited to watch me transform my craft room.

I am also loving the new lighting my hubby installed out on our back deck last night. His buddies were complaining about being under the spotlight literally when they were drinking on the back deck, and we already had the lighting so it finally got put up last night (pictures to follow soon).

And one last little thing that I would LOVE, is to hit 50 followers, and get this giveaway started!! So lets get this little old blog up to 50!!

I am also linking up Paisley Passions for Wandering Wednesdays, and I am excited about her Thrilling Thursdays link up tomorrow, where I can reveal my "project" I worked on this past weekend!!\

Hope you are all having a great week too!!

Amy