Happy Birthday Madison!!!

Today is Madison's 8th Birthday and boy did I have a MAJOR SURPRISE for her when she came home from school toady!

I went yesterday and bought her all new bedroom furniture (post bed, computer desk & hutch, tall skinny dresser which the furniture store calls a lingerie dresser, and a regular dresser) I did all this yesterday and worked all night and all day today re-arranging and setting everything up with all new bedding. I had to tell a little white lie last night and told her I shampoo'ed her carpets and they were wet and she couldn't walk on them so she had to sleep in our bed last night. Then this morning I had all of her clothes in the living room for her to get dressed so she never went in her room. After she got all ready for school, I dropped her off and came back  home and worked like a mad woman getting everything all set up. I had to force myself to stop and eat something at 2:30. I was working on an adrenaline high non-stop.

I had it all planned out for when she got home.  After I picked her up from the bus stop I ran inside and told her I had to go potty really bad,which gave me enough time for Kaitlynn and I to get inside her room. Kaitlynn had my camera and I had the my old camera with video all ready. As soon as she walked in the house I called for her, once she finally found out where I was (in her room) she walked in. It was as if a celebrity walking into the paparazzi...we were snapping away and the video was rolling. (It's so funny when you watch the mini video clip all you see is flash, flash, flash, flash) She was so excited beyond belief!

She had NO clue it was a TOTAL surprise. She said this was the best Birthday EVER!!!

All that is left to do is to paint the walls PINK, sew the curtains from the extra set of sheets to match, wait on the canopy frame to come in and the new computer chair that matches the desk to come in (they had to be ordered)

 

Zoo trip during Spring Break

Well it's back to school this week and on with getting back to the daily routine. I think we got ripped off...with the weather being so rainy for the first 3 days. We spent the first few days around the house not doing much of anything besides some much needed laundry. Then by the middle of the week we were ready to get out of the house. Kaitlynn had plans to go to the beach (OBX/Naggs head) with a friend Wednesday through Friday so that left just Madison & I. We managed to squeeze in a little Mommy & Me time on Wednesday I took Madison to see the new Hannah Montana Movie, it was really good even better than I had expected. It turned out to be a family movie for all ages, not just a chick-a-dee flick.

The weather finally started to get better by Friday, that figures, so we planned on a trip to the Zoo for Saturday. It was a bit crowded, but what a perfect day I think it got up to 80 degrees with a constant breeze so it just felt perfect. I snapped a total of 200 pictures at the zoo and guess what , not even ONE of me in it.....oh well next time. We are always AMAZED at the giraffes they are such magnificent animals, I think I could sit and watch them all day long. Madison & Kaitlynn got to pet and feed the giraffes and one of them got really up close and personal he licked both of them right across the face and neck....GROSS, but it was extremely funny and was the highlight of the day for them. Here are a few of the pics I took.

I always take TONS more pictures of the giraffes they are my favorite zoo animal

and a few more random pictures of the animals

This guy here was another one of my favorites (lemur), he was just posing for the camera big time!! ***The ring tailed lemur shown here below was Madison's favorite, she said he reminded her of King Julian on Madagascar***The baby camel was so cute***

Easter Snapshots

Before we left to meet with the family at Uncle Richard's house I managed to get all of us out in the front yard and snap a few family pictures. I sure wish I had a tripod so I could have taken a few pictures with the four of us all together {that is on my wish list to get very soon} I will be posting more pictures later as I upload them of Madison coloring eggs and the Easter Egg Hunt, which was only for Madison. She is the only small child on my husband's side of the family so we had an egg hunt just for her. All 30 of the plastic eggs were filled with candy, jewelry and dollar bills!!  I don't know what was more fun for Madison, finding the eggs or opening them all up and seeing what was inside. I am so very blessed to have such a wonderful family, we had a very nice Easter :)

 

 

Jellybean Chicks

I got this crafty idea from this website  and decided that I was going to tackle these little chicks. I went shopping this week to gather all supplies and starting making them, they were really easy to make. Madison just thought it was the cutest thing, she brought one to her teacher today and we plan to give them out to all the ladies on Easter Sunday for our family gathering. Slight problem though...we got the really good sweet tart jelly beans and we kept eating the jelly beans while filling up the bags...oops :)

Hope everyone has a very HAPPY EASTER

Blog Giveaway Winner

Congrats to Trudie L. she is the winner of my blog giveaway

your FREE stamp set will be on it's way to you on Monday!!

Thanks to all who entered.

Tina :)

Birthday Layout

This 12 x 12 double page layout coordinates back to my latest Birthday album class. I used a few left over things from class and carried over the same colors and owl as I did in the Birthday album. I am awaiting Madison's 8th Birthday later this month and her party coming up on May 2nd so I can actually add my pictures to this layout. I plan to add maybe one larger picture & small ones to the left side and  lots of small pictures to the right.

Mini Sheep box

Amazing what you can do with dollar bin items at Michaels. I found the cutest farm animal mini boxes & mini note cards in the dollar bins and decided to make a  mini accordion album out of the note cards and added pictures to each page to fit inside the mini box. I chose sheep but they also had horses, ducks, pigs, birds, & cows. You could combine all of the animals together and it would be perfect for small pictures of a trip to an animal farm, all in one mini box. ( The pictures I added was too perfect for this, last Fall when we visited the pumpkin patch they had sheep where you could pet them I snapped a bunch of pictures and printed those to fit on each page)

I have an Aunt, (Aunt Frances)  who just absolutely goes crazy for sheep. So when my eye caught the sheep boxes I had to get it and come up with an idea for it to scrapbook it somehow and surprise her.  It seems like  now when I find anything with a sheep on it I think of her. After I made her one I loved how it turned out so much I went back and bought more sheep dollar bin items and made me one too!!! Michaels also had the ribbon, bar soap, mini tissue packs for your purse, cards, journals, etc...with the farm animals on it.  I also bought one of each of those and  bagged everything up so pretty in tissue paper and tied it with the sheep ribbon and sent my Aunt a little Easter Surprise. So instead of the Easter Bunny visiting her she will have a visit by the Easter Sheep.....LOL  :)

Her package has now arrived to her doorstep so I can now share it here with you.

Planting Flowers

What a gorgeous weekend we had here...the weather was so beautiful on Sunday, it got us all in the mood for planting flowers. We took a trip to Lowe's and bought lots of flowers and spent the day outside planting. Kaitlynn was in charge of planting the creeping phlox around the blooming pear trees and she also helped me plant flowers all beside the sidewalk. I still have more work to do today outside cleaning out leaves around the azalea's and trimming back some of the ground covering. Nothing like a little bit of yard work and gardening to remind me of how much I am out of shape, every muscle and bone I have aches this morning.  Here's a few pics from yesterday, I have to take more of the overall view once I finish up today.