Daddy Daughter Date

Ava and Daddy recently went out for a Daddy / Daughter date. We asked Ava if she wanted to see "Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs" or "The Fantastic Mr. Fox" movie. She chose "Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs".

When I asked Ava what she wanted to wear for the big date, she said she wanted to wear a dress. (Keep in mind that this movie is showing at the dollar theater. ;-) So, she picked out her dress and some tights. Ava then wanted to pick out Doug's clothes for their date. At first, she chose a suit for him to wear. When I mentioned that Daddy might not be comfortable sitting in a suit for that long, she agreed. Instead she picked a tie for him to wear. :-) Doug being the sport that he is, decided to wear whatever she picked. Ava seemed very proud of her choices in attire for herself and her Daddy. :-)

The movie was a big hit, too! Here are some pictures of their big night out:

I told Doug I HAD to get a picture of him in the outfit Ava picked:

A pre-date smooch:

Daddy and Ava

Ava happy and donning her fur for the big night

Peace, love and meatballs,

Shelly, Doug, Ava and Liam

12 Year Anniversary!

January 24, 2010 marks 12 years that Doug and I have been married! It's hard to believe that much time has passed. It seems like yesterday we were scrimping and saving pennies while living in our apartment, just getting to know each other.

I am so proud to be married to you, Doug. You are an amazing man of God. You are the most loving, caring, patient and kind person that I know. I am so lucky that God purposed YOU as my husband. Thank you for every day we get to spend together!

For our anniversary, we were able to go out for a nice dinner out at one of our favorite restaurants in Roswell. Relish is a restaurant that serves yummy eclectic southern food. Alton Brown raves that their fried black-eyed peas are his favorite. It was nice to have a night out with just the two of us.

Peace, love and many more!
Shelly and Doug

Dining at Relish for our 12th anniversary

\We took pictures outside... I thought it might be a neat picture with the long bench and old stone walls...

Doug's close-up

My close-up

Snow in Georgia!

Warmest Winter greetings!

I can count on one hand the number of times I've seen snow on the ground in Georgia.

Last week it snowed. And stuck! It wasn't quite a 1/2 an inch, so not quite engouh to make a snowman, but enough to be picturesque. We had quite a bit of ice that lasted for a few days, so the city really seemed to shut down. Day cares, colleges, some businesses were closed.

Here are some pictures of our back yard from the few snowfalls we've had here this Winter.

Peace, love and big flakes,
Shelly, Doug, Ava and Liam

Our little snowman. He stayed frozen longer than I've ever seen a snowman survive in Georgia (I think it was close to a week?)

Ava and Liam having fun indoors... Lately Ava always seems to be wearing a hat (here, with her nightgown). In this picture, they are both sitting in a clear plastic storage tub in the middle of the kitchen. :-)

Holiday Festivities 2009 - in Georgia

Hello!

Ava tops this year's Christmas tree























We celebrated Christmas ALL December LONG! Why not? :-) This year, we had breakfast with "Santa Cow" at Chik Fil-A on a Saturday morning. Because the place is normally insanely busy when we occasionally go for "Family Night", I was determined to get there at 9 a.m. to beat the rush. It was good that we did... Santa Cow made quite a few rounds by our table, because there were probably only 4 families there at the time.

Whenever Liam saw Santa Cow, he would giggle and want to touch him. Ava wasn't scared and liked looking at him, too. Ava put stickers on a gingerbread house paper at the craft table, to decorate her very own gingerbread house.

Liam giggling and touching Santa Cow
























Liam waving "hi" at Santa Cow
























After breakfast, we walked over to a local hardware store that was going out of business. We saw they were selling their break room refrigerator for $50, so we snapped it up. Now we have an extra refrigerator to put things when we stock up on sales, when I do extra baking, etc.

Speaking of baking, I REALLY could've used this extra refrigerator a little earlier... This year I made different truffles to take to different holiday parties: Oreo truffles, Kraft Simply Sensational (plain chocolate) truffles, buckeyes and cookie dough truffles. They teetered on a cookie sheet in our refrigerator, strategically placed on the ketchup and any other tall bottle I could find. :-) I think I will make them again next year, as they keep well and I was just able to refill the tray for the next party. They looked fancy, at least! :-)

Tiers of truffles























Some (with plain chocolate inside) were topped with candy cane pieces, others were topped with chopped peanuts
















Oreo truffle bombs
















Buckeyes (peanut butter balls dipped in chocolate) and cookie dough truffles
















Liam didn't stay up quite long enough to decorate the tree with us, but Ava topped the tree with our star, as she has for the past few years. She really enjoyed putting the ornaments on the tree. This year's tree was heavily decorated on the lower third. :-)

Ava can sing Christmas songs with the best of them. She knows the words to "Feliz Navidad" and sings them often. Sadly, for Doug, this is his least favorite Christmas song. Ava was also chosen to be "Mary" in her school's Christmas pageant. We took some video of the play. Ava was scared to go on stage, but went as long as I accompanied her. I slowly inched away from her during the song and she did well. :-) She wanted "Mommy", but didn't run into my arms.

We went on a free horse-drawn carriage ride around a local shopping plaza, as well. We met the Hoffmans there and enjoyed a cozy ride in the chilly air. Thanks to the Hoffmans for sharing these pictures!

Doug and Ava waiting in line for the carriage ride

Our horse-drawn carriage ride with the Hoffmans. The seat was extra cushy. Liam would laugh whenever he saw the horses. :-)

Our family, snuggling up for our carriage ride.

Hoping you had a wonderful holiday season, as well!

Peace, love and holiday happiness,
Shelly, Doug, Ava and Liam

Bathroom Remodel 2010

Our house was built in 1984. We’ve done quite a bit of work to update our house, slowly but surely. Before Ava was born, we remodeled the entire kitchen. We’ve painted our “master bath” numerous times, which also serves as the first floor main bathroom.

Since living here, we have done the following to this bathroom:
-taken out the door between the bath side and bathroom side (too many doors)
-painted it an off-white color
-painted it green
-painted it brown
-replaced the faucet fixtures
-pulled-out the carpet on the shower side (triple, quadruple eww?)
-pulled-out the tile on the bathroom side
-Tiled the floor and closet ourselves
-used olive green Venetian plaster

Here are a few "before" pictures.  Honestly, they don't do the "before" aspect justice...The countertops were seriously scratched up, the walls needed major TLC.  The new fixtures definitely dress it up more than the previous fixtures (faucets).  We did keep the vanity light, as we had already replaced it some time back.  The original vanity light was a gold bar with globe-shaped lights. 

A few years ago, we added a Venetian plaster technique to the walls, as there were already some flaws that could be concealed (to make it look nicer). The Venetian plaster was a darker olive green color…Doug and I got tired of the color, so we decided we wanted to paint the room (actually two rooms attached to each other). Easier said than done! We had to use an orbital sander to sand off the Venetian plaster to get the walls smooth. It took approximately 12 days (5 hours a day) to get the walls smooth enough to paint. I’m very familiar with how an orbital sander works now! :-) We also had to do some patching to make the walls as smooth as possible.

We ended-up painting the walls twice…. Long story, but we wanted a blue-gray. The first blue ended-up being more purple than blue. The blue we ended-up going with is a Pottery Barn color called “Wedgewood Gray”. In some lights, it looks a little more green than I would like, but it is a world of improvement from our Venetian plaster. I’m happy with it.

We got a steal on some bathroom cabinets from a builder’s surplus warehouse in Atlanta, off of South Cobb Drive. Doug installed the cabinets himself. We bought some Silestone countertops from a local wholesale cabinet dealer. When Doug saw the Silestone, he was salivating. ;-) He toured a local “green” house with Silestone kitchen countertops and has liked them ever since.  We picked out some nice ceramic under-mount bowls that were installed with the countertops. We picked out new fixtures (8-inch wide faucet handles) from Home Depot, which Doug installed.

The mirrors were also original to the house and were the entire width of the bathroom. We’ve always appreciated framed mirrors. So, Doug was hoping we could reuse the mirrors and frame them. Fortunately he was able to remove them (they were directly glued to the sheet rock), make some frames and glue them into the painted frames. What an improvement in the bathroom! Our friends have mentioned that they actually notice the tile floor now (the bathroom was much darker with the Venetian plaster).

Altogether, the entire bathroom rehab probably cost less than $2,000. I’m hoping that it will help us fetch a higher price whenever we do go to sell the house in the future. It certainly won't DETRACT from the potential sale price, unlike the previous bathroom,which showed some wear. So, we did our part helping the economy with this bathroom rehab.

See for yourself…

Peace, love and new loos,

Shelly, Doug, Ava and Liam

Our helper!

And the "after" shots...

The Whitney

I have always wanted to go to the Whitney. The Whitney is a restaurant located in an old historic home on Woodward Avenue in downtown Detroit. The house was built in the 1890's for David Whitney, Jr., a lumber baron and very successful businessman.

http://www.thewhitney.com/david-whitney-jr.htm

When I was in 7th grade, my science teacher (Ms. Peterson) was plugged into all thing social, it seemed. She invited the chef of the Whitney to come cook for us at school, so we could sample muscles, clams, caviar, escargot, etc. (We were studying kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, species). I heard stories about the Whitney having one floor specifically for dessert, where there was a chocolate fountain. Sounds like heaven. I put it on my bucket list.

With each trip we've taken back to Detroit, I've often told Doug I would like to visit the Whitney. This year, we finally got our chance! Doug's Mom and Dad babysat the kids while we went with Tim and Tracy. We all had fun. Tim drove back to their house by way of Jefferson Avenue, so we got to see all of the palatial houses decorated with lights for Christmas. It was a fun night.

The food was amazing. We all got dessert, as well, and sampled each others' dish. Yum.

The Whitney, located at Canfield and Woodward Ave.


If you look closely, you'll see that the clock is actually built INTO the mantle.

Another picture of the clock

The house was beautifully decorated for Christmas. The rooms are sprawling, ceilings high. I could live here...

Gorgeous stained glass in one of the stairways. There was a wedding rehearsal going on while we were there... a couple was going to be married on one of the stairways in this house, with an hors d'oeuvres party to follow after the wedding.

Me, geeked. Doug was geeked, too... He got to take lots of architectural pictures. I'm now used to him doing this kind of thing... hopefully it wasn't too embarassing for Tim and Tracy! To Doug's credit, there were other people roaming around the mansion taking pictures, too. :)

Tim and Tracy, sitting next to a fireplace.

The valet was nice enough to take this picture of us before we went into the house.

Peace, love and scrumdidlyumptious viddles,

Shelly, Doug, Ava and Liam