Belated Birthday and Future Cheerleader?

Happy Belated Birthday Janis! It has taken me way too long to get this post up! But, some of you may have noticed on Brining Babies that we all headed to East Lansing last weekend to celebrate Janis' birthday and spend the day on campus at MSU.  Of course Norah had to wear her cheerleading outfit (GO GREEN!)!  We had a great time watching the band, walking around campus on a beautiful day and had a lovely dinner together before heading home.  It was a wonderful weekend!  And we were so glad the Hamiltons were able to drive up and meet us and Jim and Nancy (Janis' sister and brother-in-law) were able to join us for dinner.  It made the weekend that much more special! 

Future MSU cheerleader!  She loved watching the band from her Daddy's shoulders!

So glad the Hamiltons were able to make it!

Finally....another decent family picture.  We don't have nearly enough of these!

How cute are the girls in their outfits!

Grammy and Papa with all their girls!

Anyone hungry for a Ritz cracker sandwich!

Some pictures of Beaumont Tower on campus!

September in a Nutshell

I warned you that I would get behind on blogging!! :) September feels like it has flown by! Everything in my classroom is going great, Norah has adjusted to day care great and doesn't cry any more when Drew drops her off and we are just trying to take as much time as we can to spend outside and together in the evenings. Here is a little recap of our month....so far!!! :)

Audrey and Lilly were kind enough to pass down their little climber to Norah. 

All that playing sure makes a girl thirsty!!!!!

Audrey and Lilly got to come and play one evening while Mark and Ashlie headed to a Rotary function. The girls had so much fun playing together!

'Tis the Season!!!!!  Go Green!!!!!!

We have regular visitors in our backyard and Norah has taken quite an interest in them! She gets so excited watching them!

Norah Needs To Stay Up Later....

...so I can get pictures of her like this. I took some pictures tonight of Frankie. I know his Mommy from high school (actually, she went to high school at North Huron, where I am working now! She is very excited I am a Warrior! ) and her, her husband and Frankie are in Bad Axe this weekend and she asked me to take pictures! I was so excited!!! They turned out so great, and with a lot of inspiration from my sister-in-law, Ashlie, I got some great pics of him, using the sun to our advantage!!!  Enjoy.....and look for some of Norah soon, because I will be keeping her up past 7:00pm to get some pics like this!  I just have to!!!!!!!  :)

ugh......SOOOOOO DREAMY!!!!!!

Girls

Here is the picture I promised of us girls last weekend! Love ya girls!

I am hoping this isn't the end of my posts for awhile because I start school tomorrow. It is so bitter sweet to be ending this summer for several reasons. One, I didn't think I was going to be going back to work. I was laid off at the end of last school year and wasn't sure of the fate of my job status. Then, I was fortunate to get an interview at another local school and ended up getting the job. I am so excited, but definitely going to miss teaching with my sister-in-law! Everyone at my new school have been SO welcoming though and I know several of them already, so I know it will be a great year. I have a 1st/2nd grade split, which is also something new for me. The great news is I only have 16 students!!!! Watch for updates from this new and exciting school year!

Best Friends

We finally made it to Indiana last weekend to meet Rowan and Harper! They are both so beautiful. It was a great time, but very surreal to all be together again and each have a baby! The boys enjoyed some golf, the girls enjoyed some shopping and the kiddos enjoyed some playing! And of course I had to take advantage of the nice weather and beautiful babies, so I took some photos of Row and Harp! Sorry there are so many, but you know me, I can't ever pick just a couple favorites!

Norah and Rowan during breakfast!

I love this picture of Norah and Harper.  They look like they are so deep in conversation!

Rowan's photo shoot

There is something I absolutely love about this picture.  Just so precious!

Harper's turn for a photo shoot!

He loved this stick!!!

This is the best one we got of the three of them!  Best friends forever!
If you notice, there are no pictures of the adults!  I guess that is what happens when you have three babes around.  Bri is going to send me the one picture we have of us three girls, so I will post that later!  Thanks again Cashmers for the hospitality! 

Smarty Pants

DIY

I have recently become addicted to a little thing called Pinterest (thanks Ashlie!).  I also have a slight obsession with a little blog called YoungHouseLove.  Drew will open the labtop every once in awhile and say, "Oh, surprise, surprise...YoungHouseLove."  They are this great do-it-yourself couple with wonderful ideas for around the house.  I have tried a few of the projects I have found on Pinterest and YoungHouseLove.  I wanted to share some of them with you and hopefully inspire you to try a couple DIY projects of your own.  (note:  Sorry this is gonna be a long post with lots of pics, but I wanted to share them all with you at once!)

Okay, so our basement is a work in progress (I will have more pictures in the next couple of days because there have been even more developments since this picture), but this is a project I saw on YHL.  See those cute chandeliers hanging?  They are made from wire fencing and clothespins from the dollar store!  All we had were bare bulbs hanging from the ceiling and we want a little cozier feeling down there.  I thought these would be perfect. 

Here is the one up close.  This one is a little different shape than the other ones.  I love how they turned out!!!!

These are the picture frames you will see in a couple days hanging on our basement walls!  The most exciting part about the frames is I got all five of them for $14 at The Sheltered Workshop (our version of Goodwill).  The mirror was $12 at "The Junk Shop" (as Ashlie calls it) here in town!

They were all mismatched and not looking so hot, but BAM!  A little spritz of spraypaint and voila!  Beautiful!

I got this little beauty at The Sheltered Workshop too!  Guess how much?  Guess!  Guess! 
Seven BUCKS!!!!  What a steal!

Isn't she pretty!!!!!!!!!????????????  This is also my new favorite spray paint color.  It is a color that Sherry at YHL is also obsessed with.  I tried it once and fell in love!

It's so pretty, and shiny, and metallic-y and yummy!!!  What a transformation!  You will also see pics of this in the basement in a couple days!

This is our bathroom window.  I used to have some wood blinds on these windows, but they didn't fit right and they felt too heavy.  They blocked out too much light in an already dark bathroom.  So I saw this idea on Pinterest.  This lady frosted her door window with contact paper.  It was a time consuming little project, but I love how it turned out!!!!

Just a little sign I printed, painted the frame, painted the mat and hung it in Norah's bathroom!

Little ribbon never hurt a lampshade!

Just wrote this out, printed some cute colored, hexagon paper and hung it on my picture wall!

Also found these on Pinterest, printed out, spray painted the frames and hung them in our bathroom!

Well, there you have it, SOME of my DIY projects lately!  Can you tell I have been bored! :)  Ha!  Not really, just realizing I have an interest in thrifting, revamping and adding to our house to help it become more of a home!!!!!! (Cheesy, I know :)  )