Dysons Rock!

I struggled a little with the title for this post. A few candidates...
"Look at my new pink dyson!"
"God invented the dyson"
and my personal favorite...
"My carpets are not possibly that funky."

My husband surprised me with a new vacuum cleaner. I had been complaining about our old vacuum. Which is really silly considering it was a dyson that we got from an old neighbor of ours for only $100 (an absolute steal). The vacuum still worked fine, but had a few bumps and bruises from use and from the cross-country move. The most recent "bruise" came in the form of the broken clip holding the canister on. Nothing a little duct tape wouldn't fix, but not as much fun to use and empty.
Call me silly, but cleaning is easier and more fun if you have cute supplies. It is a scientific fact.
So, I saw that Target brought back their special, limited edition pink Dyson, in honor of Breast Cancer Awareness. I emailed the link to my husband, begged and pleaded, and he surprised me by buying the new vacuum for me!
So, I listed our old vacuum on Cragslist and got $60 for it! Not bad, considering I had used it for 2 years - that is only $20 a year, my friend!!
Gotta love my husband because he tried to claim that he was romantic for buying me a pink vacuum cleaner! I told him that even a pink dyson doesn't equate romantic gift. Kate Spade shoes on the other hand...

So, the vacuum came, I put it together, and gave it a test spin on my living room rug.

EWWWWWWW! Do you see the funk in that vacuum? That is just from that carpet you see in the photo above. And, no, I did not move the toy chest/coffee table (toooo heavy!) I just vacuumed around that puppy. And all that funk was in that little bit of carpet. Ick. I promise my house is alot cleaner than you probably think now.

Run. Don't Walk. To your local store and buy yourself a dyson. Your life will never be the same!

Woo Hoo, acceptance #2!!!

Ok, I can officially stop worrying now...my senior has been accepted to at least 2 schools, he WILL get an education. I know, probably worrying needlessly, but those darn guidance counselors scares the living daylights out of you telling you how hard it is to get into a college!

We are off to quilt market with our cameras tomorrow! Stay tuned for lots of fun fabric and meet and greet with other bloggers!

Too funny not to share!

Unforgettable

The envelope is labeled "Unforgettable".....how appropriate. I don't know what it refers to, as tempted as I am to rip open this envelope and read it, I am going to have to wait. What is it? My sweet baby's first college acceptance letter. Of course, he is not a baby, he is about 8 inches and 80 pounds bigger than his mother. It seems like just yesterday that he was a baby. Can he be leaving home so soon???? This is a milestone to me, but my very typical teenager is not going to find this envelope exciting at all as it is one of his "back up" schools. We shall wait for the "real deal" notofications in December...and February...and April, sigh, such a long process!

Boo!

Are you all familiar with booing at halloween? I first saw it in South Carolina a few years ago. Someone will "boo" their neighbors by sneaking around and ringing the bell and before running away unseen, leaving behind a treat of some kind with a poem and a picture of a ghost to display outside your home (so others know that you've already been boo'd).
Well,We were boo'd last week. Twice. Totally my fault - I didn't put the ghost sign outside right away. My sneaky neighbors dropped one off during the day, in the middle of kid-chaos time, before afternoon naps. So, the package just got put aside until I could explore it later. Well, later hadn't come yet, and during dinner, our doorbell rang again, and we had been boo'd again!
So, the good sport that I am, I went ahead and got 4 packages together to deliver, and Georgia and I had big fun delivering them to our unsuspecting neighbors!

This is a picture of just one of the awesome boo gift packages that we received! The contents of both were amazing! Full of goodies like banana bread mix, cake mix, frosting, cupcake liners, halloween sprinkles, candy, light up necklace, candy necklace, cinnamon coffee and MORE!! Yum!

Here is a picture of one of the boo packages we put together. I visited the dollar spot at Target for the cute buckets - I got ghosts and pumpkins - and filled it with things like notepads, dish towels, candy, and other yummies!

My kind of gardening....

I love Zinnas. They must be the easiest flower on earth to grow. I planted these back in the spring. They were beautiful until about mid August when it gets so hot in Florida that fire seems cool. In August they bit the dust, shriveled up, brown, ugly, DEAD. But Zinnas, lovely flowers that they are, re-seed themselves! So here they are in October, perky and blooming! I came in from my run this morning (3 miles, high 5 for me) and looked out on the back patio and they were just waving to me...begging in their little flower voices to be cut and brought inside. I had to accomodate them, of course, so here they are in some of my precious pitchers (I have a little pitcher obsession...maybe more about that another time). Ahhhh, what a lovely way to start the day. I hope yours is happy too!

It's a BLOG-A-THON over at SITS

What do you mean, you don't know about SITS???? Go check em out, we have provided you with a handy button(see above) just for that very purpose!
Sits is the bomb. It's a great place to go to find fun, unique blogs. SITS has certainly enhanced our blogging life. Believe it or not, they featured SWEET FUNKY VINTAGE just a few short weeks ago. We made tons of new friends and found some rockin new blogs that we now visit regularly.
Some of our faves are:
froggity (she's a KD like us, gotta love her!)
Just so you know
Pennies in my pocket
One crafty mama
My first kitchen
Sooo....go check em out, visit SITS often, visit us, too. We like to give stuff away and we LOVE to meet people.
and

Maybe not Martha...

But not bad! I have been inspired by so many blogs recently to work on my decorating. Some of my favorite blogs are:
A soft place to land
the inspired room
joys of home
modern country
thrify decor chick
and more...
The first thing you see when approaching my house is this sign I nailed to a tree -

 

Then there is this luminary tree that I have had for several years. I picked it up on clearance after halloween at Cracker Barrel!! It is one of my favorite decorations. I keep it outside away from the little people. But, maybe I will get some of those batter operated tealights and then I can put it back inside...

 

My big project for Friday was creating an entryway display. What do you think?

Try to ignore the ghost sign on the door. I would like to put in a slightly less noticeable place, but I am afraid I might get boo'd again!! But, then again, with all the goodies, maybe I should hide it!!
(ignore the mismatched door handle too... the door handle broke 2 months ago and the landlord put that one in for the time being... apparently the black hardware has become a special order item. Things like mismatched door handles drive me crazy!)

I also want to get some seasonal wreaths for the front door but am waiting for the after-halloween sales in hopes that I can pick these up...

I would love to paint the front doors orange just for the holiday, but something tells me that might be a tiny bit impractical!!!

 

I have been lusting after those urns at Target for the past few months, and they marked them down last week, so now they are mine!! I used to have some cool Southern Living at Home urns, but they went to my Mom's house, and she planted flowers in them in hopes that I wouldn't take them back - it worked! Those pansies just looked too happy to move them across country.

Now... moving indoors... I have just a few things set up...

These are some after-halloween clearance finds from last year from Target (can you tell I love Target?) The Mr. Potato Head came with halloween costumes - there is a princess, ghost and monster. The basket contains all of Mr. Potato Head's accessories. The kids love dressing him up.
(I just noticed that you can totally see in the picture how dusty my table is!! Olivia got ahold of the baby powder on Friday and made it snow! Isn't that fabulouse? It was. It. Totally. Was...)

These little guys I found last year at the pumpkin patch. I just love them! Aren't they cool?



This is our family room fireplace... I made the sign last year - printed it out online from another of my favorite blogs. I just printed them on cardstock, cut them out, punched holes and strung them on orange satin 1/2" ribbon. I love the way it looks! As I am noticing it in the picture now, I clearly need to keep working on this set-up... the plate needs some halloween ribbon and a halloween saying. In case you are wondering, the plate is the Southern Living at Home Dress-Me-Up plate (no longer available). It has always been one of my favorite items. Liz set it up there on the mantel and wrote the "dream big" saying for me...

The love of a good dog...

I snapped these pictures the other morning. Shady, our black lab, was performing one of her tricks. It is the one she does best... you probably know this one... the one where she lays on the floor (usually right in the middle of the traffic path). As you can see, she is quite good at it.


Sophia came along and began to snuggle with Shady. So, I ran to grab my camera. I am sure glad that I did. Sophia toddled off to her room, got her blanket from her crib, and brought it back to "tuck in" her Shady dog for a nap!

Big Girl Beds!!!

I have been saving my pennies (and nickles and dimes) to get this bedding from Pottery Barn Kids. I knew that my days were numbered for Olivia to be sleeping in a crib. She will be 3 later this month. Until about a month ago, she was happy in her crib (calls it her "night night") but recently she was become the night marauder. It wasn't unusual for me to put her to bed and as soon as Georgia fell asleep (almost immediately), she would go about her business. She would go into the playroom and turn on the lights. She would go into the bathroom and brush her teeth (with a half a tube of toothpaste). She would roam around the house, and sometimes come into my room (over and over again, usually).
So, it was time to get her a big girl bed.
Georgia had a reproduction wrought iron bed that we purchased a few years ago. I started looking for a bed for Olivia and wasn't having any luck finding something similar for less than double what we paid for Georgia's (out of the question and out of our price range). So, I started looking into antique iron beds. I found a family here in my town that runs a business restoring antique iron beds, and it just so happened they had two matching beds that already had the lead paint removed (a bonus, don't you think?) and were ready for them to paint the color of my choosing. I decided to go ahead and get the two matching beds, and that way I already have a bed for Sophia when she is ready for a big girl bed (hopefully many years from now)! I wanted the beds painted white, so that was easy peasy, and the coolest thing about these beds - no hardware to assemble them. The rails just pop into the head and foot boards like puzzle pieces and they get tapped in with a rubber mallet. The beds came from an exclusive boys boarding school in upstate New York. Can you just imagine? Maybe some Carnagie or Rockefeller slept in those beds once upon a time.
The motivating factor to get the big girl bed right now, was that Sophia climbed out of her crib. And since Olivia's crib was 3 inches deeper, we made the switch. Cross your fingers and wish me luck that the extra few inches keep her in!
Olivia seems to really like her new bed, and she totally loves her new bedding. She calls birds, "lee da lees". I don't know why, but how cute is that?!
The pictures above the beds are from one of our favorite ladies, Paula Prass. Paula and her daughter, Jennifer, make the coolest stuff. We carry a few of their things, including these prints, at Sweet Funky Vintage.

So, what do you think? How did I do with the decorating? I wanted to incorporate the bedding that Georgia was already using with some new stuff, without having to buy totally new stuff for both beds...