Jewelry

I had a rush order for a neighbor/friend last weekend that warmed my heart.  This necklace was a gift to his wife and they were celebrating their 18th wedding anniversary.  It reads "you are beautiful and I love you" in french.

Nickelodeon Universe

The boys and I headed to Nickelodeon Universe at the Mall of America on Wednesday.  I was anticipating long lines and dealing with tons of people.  I was pleasantly surprised to find it quite empty.  All of the schools in MN have Thursday/Friday off school for MEA weekend, but apparently, most schools must have been in session on Wednesday, because there were almost no school age kids there.  This meant virtually no lines for the boys - sweet!!!!  We had a great day together! :)

Garage Makeover

We had a garage makeover the past couple of weeks.  I had enough of the dirty walls, worn floor, and clutter everywhere!  We rented a pod, moved everything out, thoroughly cleaned, painted the walls, and had an epoxy floor put down.  We organized and purged - to the tune of 2 garbage cans, 2 recycling bins, 2 car loads to Goodwill, and a large trailer load to the dumpster at Evan's office.  I couldn't be happier with the end result!!!

Before:

Day one, emptied the garage, cleaned, and painted half of the garage:

Day two, the other half of the garage complete:

The garage floor installers arrived on Monday, and this is at the end of their first day of work - they filled all of the holes/damaged areas and removed the stain we had applied 10 years ago that was wearing off:

End of day on Tuesday - first coat of stain applied to floor:

On Wednesday, another coat of stain and the flecks went down.  On Thursday, they put down a clear coat which sealed the floor.  We were unable to be in the garage for almost a week.  While it was difficult to be out of the garage, the end result was well worth the wait! :)

After we purged our junk, we went to Lowe's for new storage cabinets to replace our old cabinet and shelving that had seen better days:

Seriously love my big cabinet!

Yes, the third stall is still very full, but has things we use regularly and need to keep:

Our pod, 20' x 8' x 8'.  So glad we had it.  Without it, I have no idea what we would have done with all of our stuff!!!!

















I know our garage isn't magazine quality, but I am thrilled for our little makeover!

Professional Pictures - Football

A friend of one of Ryan's teammates is a professional photographer and took hundreds of photos of one of Ryan's football games.  The player's parents were kind enough to share them with the team.  Here are a few that Ryan is in:

If you are interested in seeing all of the photos taken, you can view them here.  I am in awe of the clarity of the photos he took, given it was dark and raining the entire game!