weekend fun

I've been a slacker but just look at that glorious mess above - that's fun right there. Nothing like eating homemade nachos and painting your nails! My adorable church girls Kacy, Tori and Chelsea came over Friday night to eat, talk, laugh, paint nails, and watch movies. SO, SO FUN :)

We were experimenting with a new technique... pouring drips of polish on the surface of water and then dipping your nail in. The result is a colorful, marbled, tie-die look. Very cool! Unless you're me :/
Tori: There are so many great color combinations, I don't know what to choose!
Me: They all look great. Choose one! I've done my thumb 13 times now and it still looks like Shrek exploded on it.

Meanwhile, in the other room there was a very loud and animated game of I-can't-remember-what-it's-called going on amongst Davy and his friends. All I know is they slap each other around a lot, laugh a lot, yell a lot, and Erika usually wins. 

More friends squeezed in later to watch a movie and say goodbye to Liam's friend Matt who had been here visiting from England. Let's see... from bottom right going clockwise: Erika, Davy, Matt, Darren's legs, John, Liam, Elliot, and the Mouse on the floor. Oh, and did I mention my husband and his singing partner were in the studio practicing? No? It was a VERY loud, and VERY lively, and VERY awesome Friday night!

Here are the results of my first attempt at nail dipping. Okay, maybe not so impressive :/ And I finally gave up on my Shrek thumb. But I do think it's cool how the nail on my pointer finger vaguely resembles the Union Jack flag :) And I will definitely try dipping again! Most of all I just *loved* having my girls over :)

Saturday all the boys went and saw "Cowboys and Aliens", and Saturday night we had Round Table pizza OF COURSE. When we got home from church on Sunday, John said he felt like making a cake. (but you have to say it "KECK" like Martin Short in Father of the Bride) John's "KECK" turned out great! I like how he enjoys making little curlycues with the frosting, hehe. He's always done that :)

YUM!

Sandpoint Sunset

Once again, here is your Friday photo of Sandpoint, Idaho. This was from on top of Baldy Mountain where we lived, looking west toward Washington. Happy Friday and have a wonderful weekend! Don't forget your porches!

weekend score

Ahhh... can I just tell you how much I needed a quiet, relaxing weekend? Actually, I'm not sure it would be humanly possible to express it. Just take my word for it - I desperately needed some serious downtime. And a bit of alone time. I love to have fun with my friends and my fam. But I relish my alone time too. 

Saturday afternoon I took off to my favorite local funky antiques mall. I hadn't been there for a few months. That place and I go way back. We have a history. Sometimes it bugs me because it's definitely more trash than treasure, and I get trash overload pretty quickly. I'm not a junk girl. Sometimes the grumpy women who have worked there forever annoy me. Sometimes even the music grates on me! But I love the vastness. The overhead fan that kind of makes me dizzy. The familiarity. The smell. 

I've scored a lot of cool things there over the last 20 years, both big and small. A lot of them have come and gone, as I am an antiques dealer myself. But a lot of them I've hung on to. Some of my favorite things actually, have come out of this odd, unpredictable place. This weekend was no exception. 

Most of my readers know by now that I collect antique croquet and billiard balls. Well, never have I found any at this particular antiques mall - until this weekend! It was so fun to find them because it was so unexpected. Not a full set, and not terribly old, but still very much a great surprise - AND an elusive PINK croquet ball was the absolute icing on the cake! Score! Add to those a few vintage yard sticks and I was a very happy girl :)

I hope all of you had a lovely weekend?    

Weekend Update, Fairy Dust, and Magazine Day

Good morning! My high school/junior high kids went back to school today, and as much as I love them, and as much as we had an awesome Christmas break... I am thrilled and delighted to have the house to myself for a whole 6 hours. 

The magazines above? Those are my textbooks today. And you can tell by the covers I'm a month late reading them! I tried oh-so-many times over the break to sit down and read, but loud music, video games blasting, brawling boys, screaming guitars, kids in and out, and Christmas busyness kept me from them time and time again. I was all set to post a completely different post today - in fact, I have several terrific posts photographed and ready - but I decided to switch gears and get to those shiny pages of inspiration ASAP!

See the Mouse? See all his army gear? And the huge airsoft gun that I can hardly pick up? And the ax peeking out from behind him? And the gigantic pile of wood next to him? Well, my weekend update begins with my 13-year-old modeling the airsoft vest he saved up for AND the pile of wood that he himself chopped with that very ax.
Yes, you heard me right - the Mouse chopped that ENTIRE pile of wood, from huge logs, all on his own, with that ax. Seriously. Himself. Solo. I'm still trying to wrap my head around that. And we have enjoyed several lovely fires in the fireplace, thanks to him. Wow...
Now, I realize this is not the greatest picture, but I had to at least take a "before" so when all my roses start blooming I can remember the humble beginnings from whence they came. I already had 5 rose bushes, which I cut back when our pretend winter weather showed up for a week. The Mouse and I planted 7 more to fill everything in, and my husband helped me pour some much-needed new soil into the planter. You'd never know I had a 2 day migraine over the weekend.
And here is a project my husband and the Mouse are overwhelmingly proud of. They kept at it until we can now fit both cars in the garage. We have always been cars-go-in-the-garage people, but in moving several times and finding ourselves in a much smaller space really pulled the rug out from under us. And drove my husband insane. So the task is finally accomplished, and it only took 4 years. 
One final note - and a very exciting one! My lovely and talented friend from high school, Kim (White) Nelson, is having one of her adorable products featured today in Seattle's Daily Candy web magazine! She is the inventor and force behind Sprinkles of Magic "sprinkle dust", bringing a dose of simple, old-fashioned fun to our young ones and the young at heart. If you click on Seattle's Daily Candy you can check it all out, and if you click HERE you can read the entire write-up for Sweet Dreams Dust. Congrats Kim!

Well there you have it. I'm already late for a date with my magazines so I'm outta here :)