What I learned May

That i can paint: my friend Kelly invited me to a paint party. I have only ever been to one other of these. it was strange going but overall i think we both did pretty good and now we can say we are painters.

here is the before. the instructor sketched a bit of a layout so we knew where and when we were painting

here are the two of us in different stages of our painting

here is another stage of my picture

trees added

i didn't like my swirls. they looked weird to me

the finished product

and both of us with our finished paintings

WE ARE ARTISTS!

that i could be a farm girl: I went on a field trip with my daughters class to a local farm. fully functioning farm and I love every single but of it. I even got to milk a cow.

that we can have chickens (we will see if that happens): In keeping with the above farm theme I found out that we can indeed have chickens. I am hoping that works out.

that camping continues to be my favorite: this was the second year that we went camping with my parents and had a lot of fun. we added another day to the trip so that made it nice too. we ate some great food and went on a nice hike. and of course when Bear and Golden boy are together there is going to be fishing.

I am still in love with steel city pops: last year when i found our we were getting a steel city pops i wrote this post about all of the flavors that I wanted to try. (really i just want to try them all) but this month i had my first Popsicle of the summer, Avocado. it was amazing and reminded me oh how i love Steel City Pops. my other post lists some that i still have not tried but to add to the list here are a few more:

Cherry Sour Cream

Blood Orange

Champagne White Tea

Lavender Lemonade

Mango

Raspberry Lemon

Strawberry Balsamic

this is the last month that I will have a five year old: how did we get to this point. I mean wasn't is just yesterday that she was born.

What I learned in April...

1. Working out is hard work and not my favorite thing to do.
I have been working through my pin boards on Pinterest and am realizing that i am not crazy about this whole working out thing. I do enjoy the arm routines that I have done but everything else.....ugh. i can leave it. but i know that i am getting older and i need to stay healthy.
Here are my boards:
Awesome Arms Board
Workouts Board
Lean legs Board and Flat tummy Board

2. The end of the school year is rapidly approaching and I am ready of it, but also, not.
with only 15 and a half days left the race is on to finish out this year strong.

3. Walking with my friend has been one of my things I look forward to each week.
i met her when my son was 2 and i tell people that her daughter was his first friend. they were always so fun to watch play together. we don't attend the same church anymore but i love that we can still connect almost every week over a hour and a half or so of some intense walking and talking. she is a runner but i am thankful that she humors me and chooses to walk with me once a week. i am so blessed by our time together.

4. Watching my son play baseball gets better every game.
check him out here at one of his recent games

5. Hard work pays off.
little girl has been getting better and better at gymnastics every week. her coach was out for two weeks and she has been working on a bunch of different things with her but her cartwheel was one of them. over the two weeks she was off, little girl has gotten surprisingly better at it. she practices more. i think she was afraid of really getting those legs up and over and what would happen but one day she just did it. there was a lot of hooting and hollering on my part. i was pretty excited for her.

Teacher Appreciation

I was looking all over for a cute way for my kids to bring their teacher a Starbucks gift card this week for Teacher Appreciation week and I came across this link at Thrifty NW Mom.

Pinterest has a ton of links to other ways you can do this but this was just happened to be my favorite.

this is the final project!

I just need to have the kids sign their name to the card and we are done.

supplies needed:

scissors

tape

bakers twine or regular twine

Starbucks card

coffee sleeve holder

(I just asked the lady at Starbucks if I could grab two, she smiled and said that was fine and thought it would be a cute addition to the card.)

and the printable from Thrifty NW Mom here

this is what one side of the coffee sleeve looked like

this is what the other side of it looked like

I cut the one side off and then it fit on the printable cup better

see, looks like a real Starbucks cup.

you can see that when you cut the coffee sleeve it comes apart

I used some double stick tape to attach the two ends together

then  slid the gift card into the sleeve and taped the sleeve onto the printable card.

They gave me this gift card holder so I decided to tape it to the back of the card with the total amount that is on the gift card. then I wrapped the card in the bakers twine.

fun easy teacher appreciation gift and a quick way for me to get my craft on. thank you Thrifty NW Mom for the great idea and printable.

Blue Baby Shower

My good friend Mrs JCrew is having baby #3 and baby #3 will be her 3rd baby boy. we were so excited to celebrate with her.

we asked her some of her food cravings. here is what she listed

marshmallows

peanut butter

bananas

she is the momma and she gets to crave what she wants

we had some fruit, veggies, hummus, chips, strawberry cream cheese sandwiches, marshmallows (of course), peanut butter and banana sandwiches and peanut better fudge.

Jessica made these cute favors.

we had tossed around a few ideas and decide on this. I think they came out to great. she did an awesome job.

 we had a good group of ladies that were able to attend and some sweet littles that came too.

The Party hostesses and mom to be.

excited to meet baby #3.