Owl Always Love You

 

This past Sunday was the Big Day Before The Big Day for Aunt Court--her BRIDAL SHOWER! The theme was "Owl Always Love You", because Courtney loves owls. I would write more about it, but the (many) pictures below speak millions of words, so I'll let them do the talking. Enjoy!

 

Decorations...

Balloons...

Backyard Funzone

Greetings! I am back another week in a row, whoa! There is much going on this summer (and by much I mean that we leave our house more than once a week for something other than work), for sure! Saturday, we finally got a weekend day at home with nice weather, so it was a good time to turn the backyard into a toddler's fun zone, complete with a surprise guest! See for yourself...

A bounce house AND a jumbo baby pool!
Go hard or go home, we always say. 

OBX 2014, the rest of it!

The rest of our OBX trip went like this: beach, North Carolina Aquarium , rainy day, beach, home. Due to the extreme heat and humidity, I'm feeling a bit lousy today, so I'll keep the wordy part of this short and sweet and get right to the pics.

One gigantic photo dump coming up, brace yourself!

Day 2
The Tods were surprisingly unimpressed by the sand.
We actually had to convince them that this giant wet mess was "fun" to play with.

OBX 2014 - Day 1

We spent last week in the Outer Banks vacationing with the Lewis-Hess clan. We had a great time, but Jase and I learned how truly exhausting it is to be the parents of two toddlers at the beach! The 10-hour drive down there alone was enough to put us in desperate need of some relaxation. Combined with all the STUFF you have to cart everywhere with you when you have two very little ones (and a lot of sand), in addition to the 24/7 watching-them-like-a-hawk-because-there's-a-pool-outside-and-they-fear-nothing, makes for two very tired parents (and likely two very tired grandparents!).

In any event, we had a blast and were very grateful for the opportunity to get away and spend some time out of the house with Brady and Brynne. The Tods had so much fun playing at the beach and the pool every day, and they even got a chance to go to an aquarium and see some fish!

Day 1 started at 3:30am, when we got up, showered, and ushered two confused, groggy children into carseats to begin the trek to Corolla, NC. The drive was, to say the least, nothing short of CHALLENGING for this momma! Someone was usually upset about something, and I spent the majority of 10+ hours wedged in the backseat of the SUV between the carseats (with a seatbelt buckle where no seatbelt buckle ever should've been positioned, yes I am talking to YOU Chevrolet) trying to put out the many tantrums arising from sitting in the car too long and not understanding why. By the end of the ride, Brady was shouting "I'm stuck! Car done! Go home!" over and over again. (We showed him that we were "stuck" in our seats too.) Eventually though, we finally ARRIVED, and The Tods were unleashed to the sand and sea, Brynnie for the first time. See for yourself...

Coming soon...

No posts last week, because we were away....

More on that to come.

Stay tuned!

Master Bedroom Makeover - The Tufted Bench (Tutorial)

Yay, it's finally here! I finally get to show you (whomever you are out there in the internets reading this) my PRIZED DIY tufted bench!

To start the story from the beginning, I have wanted an upholstered bench at the foot of my bed since we bought our house 4 years ago. For years now, I have researched them online, shopped for deals, stared longingly at them in certain Home stores full of Goods, and always ultimately reached the same conclusion: I can't afford it. At over $200 a pop for the kind I wanted (aka, the upholstered, tufted kind), I just could never get around to justifying the expense.

After starting the Master Bedroom Makeover , I thought maybe the time had finally come to spring for one. I looked and looked, and finally found the one I had to have. Behold...



The white, the tufting, the silver, the mirrors...this was The Bench!

HOWEVER.

Master Bedroom Makeover - The Highboy and Nightstand #2

Here it is! The long-awaited (by all the imaginary readers of this blog in my head) reveal of the high dresser, also known as a "highboy" to all of you furniture nerds like me smarties out there. I actually finished, moved and filled this dresser awhile ago, but I couldn't find my memory card for my camera didn't get around to photographing it until this past weekend. Without further ado, I present Herbert (pronounced the pretentious French way, or "Hay-bear")...

 

 

The Before

Here he is prior to being refinished, in all his mahogany masculinity.

Celebrating Independence

Happy Belated 4th of July! I hope that like us, you spent the past weekend celebrating the birth of our nation amongst food, family and friends. Thankfully, the weather was unusually cool and breezy for July in PA (which was good because the two parties we attended last weekend in the sauna horrendous heat and humidity had us all "partied out" for the summer), so a blast was had by all. We started out the day cleaning getting stuff done around the house, then went for a quick swim at Gigi's (because Jason and I had not been in the pool all summer so far, a travesty for two former competitive swimmers), followed by a picnic at Gaga and Pop's. It was great to see a bunch of my mom's family that we hadn't seen in awhile (we're totally not afraid to leave our house with The Tods, I swear). I managed to get some pictures with the good camera this time, so brace yourselves, here they come...

The Happiest Toddler On the Block

He's 31

Today is a special day in the Wheeler house--it is the 31st anniversary of the birth of our patriarch, also known as my amazing husband Jason. Today he turns another year older, and so marks the beginning of the (roughly) 6 months of every year when I am a "year" younger than him (lame inside joke).

Jason. My considerate, uber-patient, witty, introverted, shrewd, athletically-gifted husband. Before he was my significant other, he was my sarcastic, occasionally hot-tempered-but-good-natured best friend with whom I loved to laugh and always seemed to be on "the same page." ("Get off my page", he would say. Another obvious inside joke.) Even though we grew up on the same mountain about a mile from each other (as the crow flies, if said crow flew over a mountain with a county line running across the top of it), we went to different schools and lived in different towns. We had one major thing in common though, one thing without which I would not be telling this story--the sport of swimming. I loved swimming at my grandma's pool in the summer, and so I begged my mom to sign me up for a swim team when I was a child. As fate would have it, the very same was true for Jason. So, sign us up our mothers did. We met on the swim team at age 8, and the rest is history.

Actually, the rest is a little more complicated than that. While I had a crush on Jason from the moment I first saw him (just like every other pre-pubescent girl on our team, I totally married the team stud *high-fives 13 year-old self*), he never noticed me until I was 16 (funny how that happens with teenage boys). Unfortunately, at that point I was already dating a complete jerk somebody else. My sweet Jason waited five whole years for that horrendous mistake relationship to play itself out (I wasn't kidding when I said he was patient) before he got the chance to date me. But he attempted many times to steal me away from my ex waited, and I can't believe how lucky I am that some girl didn't steal him from me snatch him up in the meantime!

Anyway, in honor of my husband, my best friend, the father of my perfect children, I am going to show some pictures of the Jason that few people get the chance to see...

Yes they are blurry. They were taken "in the moment" when the only camera around was my crapberry Blackberry. You can direct your complaints to the RIM corporation, who feels that this lousy camera is an asset with which to sell cellular phones in the current market. Please CC me on your complaint letter.



Work Jason.
Also known as Random Hot Guy On the Side Of  the Road By an Intersection With A Clipboard.