Weekend Stuff

We had such a fun and relaxing weekend!  Brandon had to work a trade show for part of the day on Saturday so Aunt Allie came over for a few hours of girl time.  I had promised Anniston we would go to Target this weekend to get her a stuffed Elmo.  She has the dancing and singing one, but not a soft, stuffed one that she can carry around with her.  And she loves toting around her stuffed animals under her arm.  Unfortunately, they did not have a soft Elmo:(  But don't worry, Annie found plenty replacements!

In case you are wondering, that's Minnie and Lambie (from Doc McStuffins.)  I held them out to her and told her to pick one.  She opens both arms and grabs them both at the same time.  Ok, then.  Guess we are getting both.  I hated to spoil her but I did promise her Elmo and felt so bad when they didn't have one!

After our Target trip we decided to experiment with a little finger painting.  I had a grand Mother's Day gift in mind to make, but that didn't go exactly as planned.  This was her first time finger painting and she wasn't so into getting her hands messy.  She does not like to get her hands dirty at all.  She has fallen down outside several times before and has gotten dirt on her hands and she does not like it one bit!

She actually cried for a second the first time I tried to stick her hand in the paint.  Then she proceeded to wipe the paint off on her stomach (we stripped her down to her diaper for this.)  Eventually, she warmed up to it but would still only stick the very, very tips of her fingers in the paint.  I think she had more fun with the actual paint bottles!  She would pick each one up wanting us to tell her what color it was.  Then she would move it to the other side of the table.  We did this about 5 times.  Then she scooped up all 6 paint bottles in her arms and ran off with them!  Even though our Mother's Day craft didn't go as planned, we still had fun and learned some of our colors, too!

We had a fun family night out Saturday.  I went and picked up my fabulous new chairs that I scored for a great deal at Home Goods:

Then we headed out for dinner at Germantown Commissary.  As we were leaving, a train was about to pass by.  We stood to watch it pass and I told Annie it was a choo choo train like we read about in her books.   After that, she kept saying "choo choo" over and over.  Cuteness:)

We spent some time playing and being lazy in our pjjs Sunday morning.  Of course, we have to complete our pjs with a cute headband:

This girl loves her hair accessories.  And I love that she loves them!!

My mom and dad brought both of my grandparents to Memphis Sunday afternoon to see Anniston and the new house.  We had cake and ice cream and enjoyed sitting around letting Anniston entertain us all.

We got so much stuff done around the house this weekend so I'm ready to start the week!  And I finally made some decisions about some upcoming big furniture purchases.  I have tape all around my house measuring things off so it would help me decide what would look good where.  It's all coming together- slowly but surely.  And I'm having so much fun decorating our new house.  More pics soon!

What I'm Loving Wednesday!

(one)  I'm loving my cute baby girl in headbands!  Specifically, the soft, stretchy kind.  Look how cute she looks in them!  This one just happened to come with the outfit but I'm already on Etsy buying them in every color!

The wind-blown look is natural- it was really windy out!

(two)  I'm loving this new citrus/green chevron chair I scored for 89.00!  Hoorah!  Now I just have to decide which room to put it in....

(three)  I finished another organizing project.  My husband thinks I have gone crazy.  I think I'm just so excited that we actually have room now to properly organize and keep things neat!  My gift wrapping supplies were next on my "list."  Look at how neatly all my gift wrap paraphernalia is stored!  It fits perfectly inside my awesome "craft closet!"  I think I might even put some cute labels on it:)

(four)  I love that we took Anniston to her first show a couple of weeks ago.  We took her to see Sesame Street Live: Elmo Makes Music at the Fed Ex Forum.  This girl LOVES her some Elmo.  And really all the characters from Sesame Street.  I was apprehensive about her sitting still throughout the show but she LOVED it!  She got so excited when Elmo and all the rest of the characters first came out on the stage.  And then she got busy dancing.  If they handed out awards for the child that did the most dancing at the show she would have that in the bag!  In the few days following the show, she wanted to watch Elmo nonstop!  Every time I turned on the TV she would bring me the remote and say "Elmo."  I can't wait to take her to the next show that comes to town.

New House Pics- Kitchen!

I'm weird about posting pics of things until I get it exactly the way I want.  That being said, it might have been awhile before any house pics made it on here.  But then I realized that decorating my new house is going to be a journey and I want to document that journey on here.  So keep in mind that there is still a lot of things I want to do to the house to make it the way I want it to look.  But it all has to start somewhere!

I thought I'd start with the kitchen.  Brandon and I fell in love with this kitchen the first time we saw it.  While it is beautiful, in my opinion, one of the reasons we loved it so much was because it was at lease twice the size of the kitchen in our old house.  If you had more than 3 people in our old kitchen it started to feel crowded.  Not the case here!

View from the door of the dining room

Note:  I had to order the other two bar stools from Pier 1.  I have all four now but was just too lazy to re-take the picture!  Ha!  I moved Anniston's table and chairs underneath the bay window.  She loves looking out the window while she sits down to eat her snacks!

The stools on either side of this red cabinet are the same ones that I have under the kitchen bar, except these are the taller "bar stools" and the others are "counter stools."  All of these are from Pier 1.

I love, love how big this kitchen is.  Stainless steel appliances (complete with an ice maker, trash compacter, and double oven) make me happy!  I hated that we had mismatched appliances at our old house!  I even really like the tile in here- it's neutral and super easy to clean!  Once I get all the stools, chairs, etc I want for this room (read below), I will be able to sit 11 people in here without even having to rearrange for parties!  That's one of the reasons I bought the 2 bar stools to go on either side of the red cabinet- it looks cute but it also offers up 2 additional seats for gatherings.

So what all do I want to do in this room?  The kitchen actually probably has the least amount of changes planned but I do still have couple of things on my list:

1.  Receive last 2 bar stools for kitchen counter
2.  Buy a chair for the desk
3.  Change the horrible, outdated, bay window treatments.  I really want to do some custom roman shades.  I have something very fabulous in mind.  I just need to save up the $$$!
4.  Possibly paint the walls.  This isn't high on my "Rooms to paint" list but it's something I'm considering.  I like that the kitchen feels so open and airy but there is hardly any contrast.  If I do decide to paint, I'm thinking a light mushroom-y color.  You know what I'm talking about, right?  Sorry, I'm not very good at describing colors.  It wouldn't be a dark color, I'd like to stick with a lighter shade, but I do think it would be nice to warm it up just a bit.  Maybe pull a color from the granite?  Who knows...

Easter 2013

I know Easter was weeks ago but I am terribly behind on posts.  I still wanted to go back and document our Easter because this was the "Easter Bunny's" first visit.

Our Easter was not anything like we had planned.  The Tuesday before, I started running a low grade fever.  Thinking that it was probably one of those 24 hour bugs, I rested up that day only to feel even worse on Wednesday.  Brandon had it too.  By Wednesday we were both achy all over and very weak.  I was then running fever of about 101.  I had to call in to work both Wednesday and Thursday!  I ran fever up until late Friday afternoon.  It wasn't until Sunday that I finally felt somewhat human again.  But I was still very weak and didn't have much energy.  Running fever for 4 days really takes it out of you!  Luckily, Anniston stayed well.  But all our Easter plans were cancelled.

We had planned to head out to the Collierville Square for an Easter egg hunt and a visit with the Easter Bunny on Friday, then to have a family get together with Brandon's dad and stepmom later that night.  Usually we go to church with Brandon's mom, Nana, and sister on Easter Sunday and then usually have a nice brunch afterwards. But we stayed home instead.   I had even bought Anniston the cutest Easter outfit (that I ended up returning.)  Regardless of our no-plan Easter, the Easter bunny still made a very impressive visit to the Medling house!

It was so fun to see the look on her face when she saw what all the Easter Bunny had left her.  Hopefully next year we can do some of the things we missed out on this year:)

Days Like Today Make Me Smile

I know I have been MIA on here.  I have a ton of posts I want to catch up on and document and hopefully I will get around to it within the week.

We have been super busy around here but today I got to enjoy most of the day devoting 100% of my attention to my precious baby girl.  And it was great.  Fantastic, even.  Working so much and being so busy around the house stinks sometimes, but it does make days like this all the more precious.  I don't want to forget the simple days like this- no big event happening- just us hanging out and having fun.  And that is why I blog (it's not like that many people read this anyway!).  I blog so I don't forget the days like today:)

We went out for a special treat this afternoon and had ourselves some ice cream.  Anniston's had a couple of bites here and there before (and milkshakes thanks to my mom and dad) but she's never had her own serving before.  We headed up to Baskin Robbins and chose the Very Berry Strawberry.  She LOVED it!  She loves anything cold though- ice cubes being her favorite.  Look at her big mouthful!

After our ice cream, we headed back home to play outside since the weather was awesome today.  I put her hair up in her first ever ponytail and it looked so stinking cute on her.  She loves for me to play with and fix her hair too!

Annie's first ponytail:

This girl LOVES to play outside in our backyard.  I'm so glad we moved before spring and summer hit because our last house did not have a great backyard.  I'm on a mission this weekend to get her some fun outdoor toys!

Today we played on her playground and with her new tricycle that Poppy and Kay Kay gave her this past weekend:

Her feet don't reach the pedals yet, but she loves to push it around and put stuff in the hidden compartment underneath the seat.  She has some of her foam alphabets or "ABCs" as she calls them stored in there now.  She would get them out one by one and hand them to me and then put them back underneath the seat (one by one.)  That took up a good 10 minutes.

Then we spontaneously decided to have a dance party:

Look at all those moves!  One would think that we turned on some really jammin' music to get her to dance like this.  Nope.  Just a little bad version of the alphabet song sung by Mommy.  Yep- that's all it takes to get her hips swinging!

And we even dropped it like it's hot:

Annie was so tired after all that dancing that she took a load off and let me push her around in her car:

We also played with her new favorite thing- bubbles!  She loves trying to catch them.  Brandon was home shortly after that and to celebrate our good day we all went out for Mexican!  Anniston had apparently worked up an appetite because she inhaled her food!

Today was one of the best days.  And it got even better when after bath Anniston ran up to me and threw her arms around me and gave me a kiss on the cheek.  Melts my heart, I tell you!