Because she's amazing!

My friend Nightingale came over last Friday morning to bring me the CD's for all the family pics she took of us and on Saturday evening, I was finally able to sit down and look through them all!  I was so excited to see what she captured that day.  She did such an amazing job, and I thought today I'd share just a few of my favorites!

This one ended up on our Christmas card! It was just that good!

I love how the girls are being sweet on each other in this one. It's not that often they aren't trying to kill each other, lol!

This one was just pure sweetness. Definitely gonna frame this one!

Me and my Audrey...The squeakiest wheel in the bunch!

We were trying to get all three girls to roll down the hill! I love how Fernando is standing at the top just watching them and also how you can see the marks in the sky from a plane.  Too cool!

We took several posed family shots but getting all five of us to look at the camera was near impossible!  I think this one was a great shot despite my hubby's saying he looked like he was squinting here! Ha!

I am so glad we were able to do these pics and I can't wait to get a few framed! I'm also looking forward to trying this DIY canvas thing I saw on Pinterest with a few of the pictures.  When I get them done, I'll be sure to post some pics!

Thank you so much again Nightie, for everything!  You are amazing!

And local friends....if you are looking for someone to photograph your family, please let me know and I'll get you in touch with Nightingale! :) I know you will love her!

A bazaar, a new Etsy shop, a fun photo shoot!

Once again, it's been a week since I last blogged! I know, I know, I totally said in my last post that I'd be posting more but it was such a busy week that I had not a single minute to stop and document it!

Last week was all about getting ready for a Christmas bazaar I was a part of at the church where I attend MOPS.  I've been telling everyone that First Christian Church is like my second home because it's really true! I attend MOPS there, go to Bible study there, and Alyssa goes to Awana there!

On Friday night and Saturday during the day, our MOPS group had a booth of our own that we put together to help raise money for Wren. Several of us crafty girls made some different things to sell in the hopes that we could  bless Wren in a big way.  Like I mentioned last week, my friend Sonia helped me assemble some cookie mixes in a jar.  Alongside those, I also made some red velvet cupcakes in a jar, and some hair clippies and headbands to sell and I was so excited that people actually liked and bought them!  My friends Kirstin, Michelle and Jennifer also made several amazing things, like handmade cards, jewelry, ornaments,coffee cozies and and so much more!  They also made these awesome scrabble tile pendants!

I love how Kirstin displayed them and was not shocked at how well they sold!  The girls made around 200 of them, can you believe it?

The Lord totally showed up and blessed our event in a way that we couldn't have even have imagined!  I wish I could share with you just how much, but I want it to be a surprise to a certain someone who may be reading this, so I won't! :)  All I can say is that God is GOOD!

In all my excitement earlier in the week, I decided to start making my hair clippies again. It's been a year since I closed down my crocheted hat business but something inside of me has been wanting to get back into crocheting and selling what I make again.  It always seems like an issue for time, but when making the hair clippies, they're so fun and they don't take a lot of time to work up a bunch of them!  After seeing just how well they sold this weekend, I decided to officially and finally open up an Etsy shop that I opened a couple months back that I had just sitting there waiting for me to something with. Here's my new cute little logo my friend Crystal made...

I spent some time today working on setting that up and now I'm the proud owner of a new little shop I renamed "Hooked On Baby!"  I will hopefully be adding some hats to the shop in the coming weeks, but in the meantime, you can check out my new and improved hair clippies and brand new headbands!  I am really excited about having a little something just for me again!

I went ahead and put the little widget for my shop on my sidebar so you can see a sampling of what I've been making!  To go to my shop, you can also go HERE!  I have a sale running right now on my holiday clippies that will be running all week.  You can also go HERE to my business Facebook page!

And finally, the other exciting part of the post is that we went and had our family pictures taken over the weekend by our friend Nightingale!  I posted at the beginning of the year HERE about how she'd come over to our house for a "Day in the Life" type photo shoot. I had such a fun time with that, and just knew that I wanted her to take our family photos as well!  She does such an amazing job and I was so excited to get to spend Saturday morning with her and her husband, who helped out as her assistant!

Nightie, as we all call her, blogged tonight about our photo shoot HERE! I was so, so excited to see how the pictures turned and and my hubby and I cracked up together while looking at the pictures!  

 Be sure to check it out and please be sure to leave her a comment letting her know you were there! 

P.S. Thanks so much Nightie for putting up with us and for capturing my AAA girls (as you call them, lol) exactly as I want to remember them!  You are amazing!

Fun on the Fourth!

I made it my goal over the weekend to give the computer a break and just enjoy our holiday weekend and that's what I did!

On Friday and Saturday, I spent some time baking some cupcakes and cookies to take with us to the beach on Sunday, where we spent the the entire day with our family for the 4th.  I had fun making the cookies and tried out some new techniques I learned on the cookie blog I mentioned the other day.  I think they turned out pretty cute but they were definitely a ton of work!  It'll be fun to work on more cookies like this again in the future, but I've learned that they are definitely something that would have to be a project for after I put the girls down for the night!

Here's how the cookies turned out...

And the patriotic cupcakes...

I found some cute printables to make these cupcake picks on this blog the other day.  I think they were a neat addition to the cupcakes!

We had a great time at the beach with our family just hanging out and BBQing.  The girls had a lot of fun with their cousins and friends too!  Here's our family pic from this year...

 I love how Audrey was smiling so big here!

And here was my Livvie, taking one of her many naps of the day!  She did so well and was such a good baby!  Can you believe her 3-6 months clothes are already getting a little snug? 

Here was another one of my favorite pictures of the day!  Me and my little mini-me!  Of all five of us in our family, she and I were the only ones who got sunburned.  Go figure!

After spending the whole day at the beach, we made it home, gave the girls their baths and headed off to the parking lot of one of the shopping centers downtown to watch the fireworks from the fairgrounds. 

It was a short show and nothing too exciting and before we knew it, it was almost 10:00 p.m. and it was time to head home and put the girlies down for the night.  All of us had had a long day and it was nice to finally get home and get settled for the night.

All in all, we had a great Fourth!  I let that be my treat day and let me tell you, I really splurged that day!  I probably had one too many of these...

so now it's back to being a good girl this week!

Hope you all had a great weekend too and I'm excited to get caught with everyone else out there! 

P.S. If you haven't heard much from me lately, please don't take it the wrong way.  Life's been crazy busy and I'm trying to do better about not letting the computer take over my life!  I have more fun stuff to share this week and even have a few giveaways coming up just as soon as I can find time to post them!

Bittersweet

Anytime things get a little quiet on here, it's safe to say I'm probably working through something that might not be "shareable" on the blog.  I try to focus on the positives but sometimes it's just not possible.  Today is just one of "those" moments.

Yesterday ended up being a little bit bittersweet.  Father's Day just tends to be that way for me.  See, I used to be a bigtime Daddy's girl but a lot of that changed when my parents seperated and subsequently divorced when I was still in high school.  I don't share a lot about the details of that kinda stuff on here because I try to be sensitive to family but what I will say is that over the past year, I've struggled to have a relationship with my dad.  I wish that certain circumstances were different, but they just aren't.  It's crazy how even at 30 years old, certain things can still matter so much to a person.  I want to have a better relationship with my Dad but I'm still working through how to get there. Until then, Father's Day is just one of those days that hurts.

As a result of my issues with Father's Day, yesterday wasn't the best day for my Hubby.  I was very selfish and made my own issues spoil the day and for that I am really sorry.

Fortunately, it wasn't all bad.  I was able to get a sweet picture of Daddy and his girls from the brunch we went to with my Hubby's brother and his family.

{Daddy and his girls}

If I know one thing, I know that a bond between a father and his daughters is a special one.  I know that our girls love their Daddy and he will always have a special place in their hearts even when they're grown and gone.

I'm so thankful for my Hubby for being such a great father to our girls.  We are blessed and so thankful for for all he does to provide for us!  Happy Father's Day to the best daddy ever!

P.S.  Hopefully I won't be so down in the dumps tomorrow and I'll be able to share how Alyssa's birthday turned out from over the weekend.  I'm still trying to recover from that and I'm thinking that I may just have to rethink big parties from now and going foward!  It was fun but just a ton of work!

Beach Fun!

Happy Thursday!  Just a quickie post because I'm camera happy lately and wanted to share some pics we took at the beach last night.  We had SO much fun just hanging out at Avila Beach (which is like 20 minutes away from here) after dinner and took a ton of pics!  When I went to upload them to the computer this morning I was thinking there would probably be around 100 new pictures just from last night but I was wrong.  It was somewhere close to 200 photos! 

Here are a few of my favorites...

Me, Alyssa and Livvie (in my new Moby wrap...now I have two I can rotate)!

Audrey LAYING in the sand.  She had a blast and got SO dirty!!!  And yes, she was wearing a sweater here even though its summertime!

My sweet Livvie!

My Hubby who was all wet here after taking a swim in the really COLD ocean.  Don't know what he was thinking!!!

                                        Me and my sweet girl.  I just love those chubby cheeks!!!


Well, I've got a ways to go with learning what all this camera does, but I'm having a TON of fun practicing in the meantime!!!

P.S.  Don't forget to check out my giveaway from yesterday for some cute hair accessories from Trinity's Treasures.  Go HERE to check it out!