Ah, puppy love....

After a 6 day weekend mini vacation (thanks to the snow), yesterday was Caleb and Lilly's Valentine's day party at school

Lilly had this dress picked out for a while now. The knee socks I just found on clearance at the shoe store this weekend and she paired it with her lovely heeled boots.
So you notice with these boots on, she goes from freakishly tall to "taller-than-my-big-brother-who's-two-years-older-than-me" tall. Caleb's not exactly short either.
And you may wonder "what is up with that tie??" Did his mom make him wear it?
Well, the answer to that is no. He came down with this all on his own. Including the messy hair which he achieved by using my moose.

Apparently, Caleb has a big crush and was trying to impress a girl. Hence his spiffy attire.


He was over the moon when he came home with a valentine from her.

I found this beauty on Etsy which recently sold for $52.

My sister might recognize this- because when she moved the last time she had one just like it she no longer wanted and Abby decided she wanted it.

And then Abby decided over the weekend that she's rather have room on her walls for posters of Mr. Robert Patterson and other teenage hotties du jour.

So she gave it to Lilly.

Who immediately put it to good use.







So now her Littlest Pet Shop animals are all arranged with care. Her Nesting Penguin dolls have a home and she is thrilled with the outcome.



And best of all- it was free!

Thanks Jess!

Etsy Love

I have a slight confession to make.

I am just a wee bit obsessed with etsy lately.

It's like a craft fair, only better. Cause I don't have to sift through things this Alice In wonderland beauty.

Now I'm sure someone worked really hard on this, but it's really not my style- at all. And this is the kind of thing I usually run into when I go to craft fairs around here and the reason we don't hang out long.

And so when you are in Etsy if you are looking for something in particular, you can just type it in like magic, the screen is full of the very thing you are looking for.

Here are some things that I have found and made their way into my favorites list lately:

Wouldn't this be adorable next to one of my gnomes???


These would be perfect on the top of our media cabinet where Jim's collection of antique camera's currently reside:



How cool would this be???



Me and Jim- we go together like PB & J




I'm not getting married, but really, if I was- this would be my cake topper of choice:



I just bought this tonight to store my itouch in:


Abby thinks it's too valentiney, but I have a thing for hearts and so i didn't care. :D


Speaking of Valentine's Day- this was my favorite etsy find ever and I ordered this for Jim as a Valentine present:



Isn't that just stinking cute??? (obviously, our doesn't say emily and jason, but Jen and Jim) I originally intended it to go up on our bed, however, I think it's going on the downstairs couch instead. :D

That's all! I'm off to find more etsy inspiration.

Just in case you weren't satisified looking at your own snow

You can look at ours.


This is what our front yard looked like after the super shoveling fun we had on Sat and Sunday.
We had Killer Icicles- which was a good sign that some of our accumulated snow was melting
The roads weren't perfect, but they were drivable.
Fast foward to Last night and round two of the snow fun.


This is the view from our font door as of 7:00 last night.











































































So yeah. This is what we are going to dig our way out of today.


It's 10:00 am now and still have not seen a plow truck.

If you don't hear from us- it's quite possible we will be lost in our front yard and it may take the spring thaw before you'll see us again.

Happy winter everyone! :D

Ask me why I'm smiling! Go ahead!

Football season is over for another year!!!!



Although to be quite honest this football season was one of the better of our 10 year marriage. The DVR recorded the games Jim wanted to watch and then he watched them on his day off, when I'm not home.

So I wasn't as cranky about it as I have been in years past where is seemed as though our whole life had to stop every sunday for 5 months & Jim would zone out leaving me to deal with the kids on my own. Those were the good ole days. (yeah right) hence my extreme attitude about football season.

But like I said, this football season was different and so I was not as cranky, and I'll tell you something. I actually enjoyed the game.

Granted, I had my laptop on & was surfing the web pretty much the entire game, only popping my head up to watch the commercials and the half time show.



(this one was my favorite. At least from what I saw, I didn't stay up to past the third quarter)



(this one was a close second. Rock on Sock Monkey!)


I'm telling you, the DVR is a wonderful thing. If future football seasons are like this from now on, I might get over my football crankies. I just might. Don't go holding your breath though.

itouch envy

Jim and I have been suffering from itouch envy.

We purchased one for Abby for Christmas and decided to load it up full of apps and make sure it was charged for her to play with on Christmas morning.

Which means we got to play with it before she did.

And let me tell you it was not easy putting that sucker back in the box and wrapping it up rather than putting it in my purse and keeping it!

We love how it hooks up to wi-fi and can stream music in from Pandora.

We love how there is enough space to keep our entire music collection in one place.

We love how tiny it is.

We love how there are different apps that can be uploaded to it to make life easier and more fun. Evernote has as App. Facebook has an app. Yahoo has an app. There is literally an app for anything.

We love that it shuffles our music- and the way to shuffle it is to shake it! (as opposed to our current MP3's which just play the same music in the same order over and over. They were not cheap but less expensive than an ipod and it shows. They are the reason we have decided to spend more money and get something that we know will actually work the way we need it too)

We love that there is free engraving- so we will be able to tell who's is whose.

The only problem the engraving is this:
What do we engrave on it?

Should I go Traditional and put on my name:
Property of Jennifer (which if you think about it, it's not very unique. It could belong to half of the 30 somethings in this country right now)

Should I make it cutesy and play off my nick name? :
Momma Mia, here I go again... (My personal favorite at the moment)

Should I put on a grave warning- 'a la an Egyptian tomb curse:
Beware to all who trespass- you shall be pelted with marshmallows if you proceed without permission. (this message is mainly geared towards the gruesome twosome)

I could channel my inner 12 year old romantic an inscribe:
My heart belongs to Jim (ummm... Excuse me while I go barf.....)

Or perhaps I should make a more philosophical statement such as:
All who wander are not lost (which I'm pretty sure is what Jim is going to to use. It's one of his favorite Life is good sayings)

So that is the pickle we find ourselves in at the moment as we wait for our income tax return to show up in our bank account. What do you think I should go with? Any of the above? Something else not listed?? Let me know.

Shunk 101 Update for January

16. Family Game night with a game we have never played before (2/3)
The Crazy old fish war card came 1/3/10
Mr Men & Little Miss Twister 1/18/10






35. Deep Clean the kitchen (1/3)
36. Clean out kitchen cabinets

I am ashamed to say that this is long overdue. Keeping up cleaning this house while working full time has not been easy. But I'm back on the Flylady bandwagon and we are baby stepping our way to a cleaner house. :D

39. Put up blinds in the kids rooms
Seriously, this is a big deal. We've not had blinds in the kids rooms for ages- cause they kept playing with them and breaking them and I got tired of replacing them every other day. We've had them in for 2 weeks now hopefully our children now appreciate the value of blinds and treat them with a little more respect!

43. Use the typewriter in 10 projects (1/10)
Valentines Day Heart Project 1/31/10



54. Eat vegetarian for 20 meals (2/20)
Couscous Salad & Carrot Soup 1/9/10
Panera's mediterian Veggie sandwhich and French onion soup




71. Set up an allowance/chore chart for the kids

87. Watch all the Star trek movies together (4/10)
1/8/10 Star Trek the motion Picture
1/15/10 Star Trek II
1/19/10 Star Trek III the search for Spock
1/31/10 Star Trek IV

96. Make Handmade Valentines day decorations with the kids








And that's what we've been up to!