Wordless Wednesday

-Bethany

Cabo, Part 2

Our visit to Cabo was Palmer's first encounter with sand, other than a recent trip to a neighborhood hangout called The LOT, and absolute first time to see a beach.

I'd heard kids either love or hate the sand experience.

Palmer falls into the fan category and enjoyed running around on the beach and throwing the sand up in the air.

Or doing somersaults, which made washing his hair later that night oh so fun.

Palmer made some friends one morning for sand castles.  Although I use the term "friend" loosely as Palmer liked to mess up the castle creations of others more than make his own.  Oops.

We stuck to ourselves on another day and had fun filling the buckets with water and sand.

One of the biggest safety concerns in Cabo is the dangerous riptides from the ocean.  Rick and I let Palmer carefully wade into the water only up to his knees and one of us always had our hands tight around him each time.

Nevertheless, Palmer found the water from the waves hilarious each time they rolled up to him.

 More to come from Cabo...

-Bethany

Cabo, Part 1

After a pretty intense round of work for Rick at the end of last year, we decided that a family vacation was on tap for the three of us.

Because of Cabo, Mexico's direct 2.5 hour flight and minimal change in time zone, we settled on the Mexican resort town for our getaway.  

Although our time away was lovely, I'm afraid Palmer's more quick to tell you about his time at the airport.  What's not to love about a one-stop location for trains, planes, buses, and "golf carts" (luggage carts)??

Nevertheless, Palmer did great on the plane (and Rick vowed we would never travel Mr. Squirm as a lap child again!), but refused to sleep.  

We rented a private home on the beach of the Palmilla community.  It was wonderful to have our own kitchen stocked with groceries for the week.  Once we settled into our home away from home, Palmer slept the afternoon away in style to the sound of the waves.

I put Palmer in swimming lessons earlier this year and was pleased to see Palmer's comfort level in the pool exceed last summer's.  There was a heated pool down the street from our house and Rick especially liked to swim laps in it.

 I picked up a few water guns at the dollar store before we left.  Palmer thought the squirters were so hilarious.  Even better- he doesn't get that you are supposed to spray other people and had a ball spraying his OWN face.  Perfect.  I wonder how long that will last...

Our home was next door to the posh One and Only Palmilla Resort where we had dinner one night.  The locals couldn't get enough of our curly blonde hair kid greeting everyone with "Hola!" and "Adios" during our dinner outing.

The beach air did wonders to little man's curls!

More to come from Cabo...

-Bethany

Wordless Wednesday

-Bethany

My Blog in a Book

 Since I know a lot of you readers are also bloggers, I wanted to share one of my favorite companies.

At the end of each of the last couple of years, I've gone to the site Blog2Print to turn my year's worth of posts into book format.

I had to share it with you because my new 2012 book just arrived and I think it's absolutely delicious.  When it's all said and done, I mostly write on this blog so that Palmer can have a baby book to look back upon.

Blog2Print makes it extremely easy to convert the digital blog to print.

NOTE: I was not incentivized by Blog2Print to write this post.  I just love the site and had to share.  However, if you work for Blog2Print and see this, hook me up!

-Bethany

Wordless Wednesday

-Bethany

Your Trash Is My Treasure

Two years ago, our house was on the neighborhood home tour.  I spent the weeks leading up to the tour in a frenzy and promised Rick the money was all well spent because ALL of our home projects in this home would be complete.

Aww...bless his heart for believing me.  I've got the itch again and here's what I've been working on.

Here was our master bedroom a few weeks ago:

The redecorating all started when I found this nightstand at an antique shop.  When I bought it, the drawers were adorned with nasty gray knobs, but I knew the piece would be adorable at the side of my bed with these brand new crystal knobs.

Well, the new nightstand led to a bedroom rearrangement which led to our bed accidentally getting broken as it was moved across the floor which led to a new bed which led to a new complimentary nightstand for the other side of the bed and a new rug and a new chair.  (Of course it did.  That all makes sense to me.)

Our room today:

I still need to move the window treatments to the other window, but you get the gist.

By the way, I have to brag about my steals.  I love love love to treasure hunt in the dingiest of thrift shops and flea markets for bargains.  Check out the costs:

First nightstand: $60 at an antique store

Second nightstand: FREE (free!) when I saw someone unloading it for donation at one of my favorite thrift shops

Crystal knobs for both nightstands: $3.99 each from Hobby Lobby and inspired by this post. (PS When I say crystal, I probably mean acrylic.)

Rug: $100 off the sidewalk outside another favorite thrift shop haunt

Chair: $45 at a flea market.  I'll probably recover it and get it painted at some point.

Mirror: FREE (free!) when I saw someone unloading it at Goodwill while I was also making a donation (I shouldn't feel guilty about taking from the poor, right?!)

Bed: Bought new at Wier's. Not a bargain, but hey, you can't get a free ride in life all the time.  Sheesh.

While out shopping, I fell in love with this jute pouf at an antique store.

Unfortunately, I didn't love the $250 price tag on it.

Not to worry, I got this pouf at a thrift shop for $5 dollars and plan to reupholster it with jute to match the pouf above.

I also read that you can sometimes get jute coffee sacks from local coffee stores.  You better believe I'm going to make some new coffee shop owner BFFs this week.  :)

And one last find: I got this little oval frame super cheap at an antique shop.

 It seems perfect for a silhouette of Palmer like this, doesn't it?

Rick, Mother's Day is coming up.  I think you have your work cut out for you.  xoxox

-Bethany