Like A Kid In A Candy Store

As promised, here are my finds from Canton. Nothing too exceptional, but I was a little short on time (and funds) so overall, I think it went pretty good. Craig came with me and was a total good sport the whole time, pulling around my wagon of loot. What a trooper! Thanks honey! So back to the goods. I got:

This cool picture frame for the bedroom. It's going to look fabulous when I'm done with it and it matches my furniture perfectly.


This bedside lamp was too perfect a match with my bedspread to pass it up, so I bought a pair.


I am going to have to paint them silver, but that's on the bottom of the project list right now.


This cute, funky jacket. It's so Romeo and Juliet (Claire and Leo version)

It makes me look hot, even at 2:00 in the morning, see? Talk about all dressed up and nowhere to go...



And check out the back! Love this - Can't wait to wear it out.



I took a tip from my friend Rochelle and got this cross to help organize my necklaces (which brings me to my next great find...)


This Fleur de Lis necklace (or as Craig calls it my "New Orleans Saints necklace") could be my new favorite piece of jewlery. I want to marry it!


And what would a trip to Canton be without a new little hairbow for AJ. Now everyday is "I wanna wear the bow with my name on it!" day.


I also found some other great finds for Christmas gifts, but posting them would spoil the surprise.

And I figured since I wasn't a blogger the last time I went to Canton, here are some of my favs from the last trip.

Who says you can't buy happiness! All this stuff looks like a whole lotta' happiness to me. :)

I'm Baaaaaack...

Bet you all thought I died of a heart attack from eating all the fair food. Close, but no cigar. It just made my butt grow so big I couldn't fit in my computer chair and blog. Much to your relief, I am back to normal and ready to go. I tracked back through some blogs today, and realized how much I love it. I've missed you, invisible friends! So here's a quick recap of what I've been up to since the last post:

I painted AJ's wall mural (what a chore!) and now it should only be another 2 years before I finish the rest of her room.


Craig's brother and sister and her husband came in from Utah to visit. We went to:

The Water Gardens,




Medieval Times,



(Which AJ LOVED! This was her pretty much the whole time),




And Six Flags, just to name a few.



Since my last post, we went to a kick-butt Halloween party as the American Idol Judges.


We also celebrated Halloween with AJ. This was her first year of really getting excited. So fun!

Her Costume:



Her Pumpkin:



Her Trick-or-Treating Grounds:



Her Haul (AKA mom's new scrapbooking junk food stash):


OK - Lame boring post, but at least I'm semi-caught-up and can hop back on the blogging bandwagon. Coming soon, my Canton finds...

A Fair is a Veritable Smorgasbord, Orgasbord, Orgasbord

Ahh, the State Fair. The one a day a year I can consume enough calories to feed a small country and NOT feel guilty about it. (The other several days of the year when I eat that much, I feel the pangs.) But not at the fair. This year, it was all business. I got online ahead of time, looked up what ridiculously fattening foods would be available, wrote down a list and took it with me. I'm please to announce that I ate all but one and I've never felt more pleased with myself. I guess my high school guidance counselor was right - goals ARE important!

Here's my delicious list:

Corn Dog - right out of the gate...


Cheese curds - honestly, I REALLY wish I was munching on some of these right now...


Fried Guacamole - these would make a great party treat (at a Get Fat Now party)...


Fried Cookie Dough - this was Craig's favorite, and rightfully so. Friggin' good...


Roasted Corn - A vegetable; yeah healthy me... (ahem, please disregard the butter soaked paper towel)


Fried Banana Pudding - a little slice of heaven...

And why not wash it down with a big 'ole glass of fresh homemade lemonade...


And some cotton candy...


And popcorn.

That right folks - no guilt. It only comes once a year and I love it! The only depression I'm feeling is from the one thing I didn't get around to. Even in my glutinous behavior, I was too full (sick) to stomach the Fried Frito Burrito. Oh you heard me right - FRIED FRITO BURRITO! (I'm such a pansy!) I'm totally regretting it now. I should have just taken my chances. Well, there's always next year. 364 days and counting.

I may be biased...

But think my child may be a genius. Sure, she may say funny things that make me laugh. Like:

We had a bowl of mangos on the table. She brought one to me and said "Mom, can I eat this flamango?

All of a sudden she thinks when cats meow, they are saying "Smell" but it sounds more like "smeeeyl". She got a cat costume for Halloween. She walks around practicing "smeeeyl, smeeeyl, smeeeyl."

She can sing every word of "Good Morning Baltimore" from Hairspray. I'm not exagerating - THE WHOLE SONG!

She grabbed my (ahem) love handle and said "What's these?" Since she's (almost) a genius, I corrected her and said "You say "What's this" - after all, she was only squeezing one.

We actually had a successful use of the potty last night (I'm telling you GEN-IUS!) OK, so it's the first success in months, but it was a gifted moment for me.

I hope everyone knows that I'm joking about her Mensa status, but all that aside, she did do something that blew me away last night. I was sketching some stuff for her room and she had some paper and markers and was sitting on the floor beside me. I wasn't paying much attention to what she was doing, but she stood up and handed me a paper and said "Look mom, I made a kitty." This is it.

My two year old! Drew this! All by herself! I'm sure nobody thinks it's as amazing as I do, but I was flabergasted that my child, who up until this point has only scribbled circles, actually drew a legible cat. For a few moments, I was the proud momma of a child "genius". Then she moved the paper in front of my face and said "smeeeyl."

Rainbow Connection

There was a beautiful rainbow out tonight after the storm and AJ spotted it. I was so excited, not just because she could actually see and recognize it, but because she was SOOO excited about it. She was naming off all the colors and had this look on her face for 10 minutes.

It was so cute!

BYU - Not As Good as They Once Was

So much for having time for my multiple new posts - AJ's sick now. So here's another quickie.

Craig's brother Paul flew in a couple weeks ago and he and Craig went to the BYU game in Oklahoma. The went up early and did the whole tailgating thing and spent the night after the game. Unfortunately they lost, but Craig said they still had a good time. They had front row seats and Craig even stopped to take pictures for my blog, and I wasn't even there to pressure him into it. And to think, it only took 8 years to train him...



He may make fun of me and my girlfriends and our crazy nights out, but we are never seen in public wearing matching T-shirts. Seriously!


And speaking of seriously, I loved the Grey's Anatomy season premier. The teaser previews had me freaking out thinking Derick was going to end up with Meredith's sister. That show would have been so over (at least for me.) But alas, they heeded my telepathic warnings. Ahh... so glad it's fall again.

Since I Been Gone

Sorry I've been away for a while - I've been REALLY sick. Hopefully the worst is behind me. But since it's been so long, I've got plenty of blogging material so, time permitting, I should have lots of new posts coming up. (Ohh, I know you all can barely contain your excitement!)

One of my mini-albums will be featured as a giveaway on the Tip Junkie website. If you haven't checked out this site yet, you're missing out. It's filled with great tips and ideas for everyday life. The details for the giveaway should be up on her site within the next day or so. Here are some pics of the book to get you all so excited. It is a "girlfriend" themed book - a fun way to display all those fun photos of you and the girls. Good luck to all who enter.

Daddy's Girl

I've always been a bit of a Daddy's Girl at heart. There is something special about the relationship a girl has with her father. I'm lucky to have a great Dad and that we have such a good relationship. We had a nice long talk tonight and he helped to lift my spirits during a really down-in-the-dumps week. (Thanks Dad)

I am also married to a great guy so I have no doubt AJ will be just as crazy about her dad when she grows up as she is now. There is a little piece of me that is jealous - moms just can't compete with the daddy-daughter thing. But most of me is just glad for them.


I saw this letter on Tangled and True and I had to share. It made me cry! It is from a Real Simple Magazine family feature called "Read this when..." : Letters written to children by their parents to be read at various milestones. (I'm sooo making Craig do this for AJ.) Grab a tissue...


To Sloane, age one, to be read on your wedding day
by Rob Corddry
{Rob Corddry is an actor is Los Angeles.}


Sloane!
Hey bug! Who's a bug? Who's a bug? Are you a little bug?
I hope that still makes you laugh. In 2007 I kill with that. Sometimes you laugh so hard, I think you're going to turn inside out. But if you are reading this letter, you haven't. You are still right side in, and you are getting married. I wonder what year it is. When do people get married in the future? Your mother and I got married late compared with our parents. I do hope you're not 75. I understand that you may want to have fun and travel, but 75 is way too old to get married for the first time.
Are you happy? Are you the person you want to be? I hope so. If not, don't worry; you still have plenty of time. I hope this person you're marrying helps you out with that.
Here's a good question: Do you still make "the goofy face"? Let me explain. The other morning, I got you out of your crib (are you sleeping past 6:30 A.M. these days?) and brought you into bed with us like I always do. I laid you next to your mother, and you turned and looked at me with the goofy face. It's a very calm yet intentionally piercing gaze, contemplative in the way you cock your head and purse your lips at me. You don't stare at your mom in this fashion. It's almost as if you know I'm going to say something stupid and you are giving me the requisite look, pre-embarrassment.
"She's making that goofy face again," I said to your mom.
"That's not a goofy face," your mom said. "That's a mature face."
And at that moment everything changed. I saw you as you may look today, reading this letter. I saw a flash of the young woman you may become. And in that flash I fell more deeply in love with you, if that's even possible. I reveled for a second in the relationship that we have barely begun to forge. I can't wait.
I hope you enjoy this day. I hope your mother and I weren't impossible and didn't invite too many of our friends or clients. Then again, I am, most likely, paying for this damn thing.
Have a wonder-filled day and a wonder-filled marriage and a wonder-filled life. I'm trying to raise you with love and just the perfect amount of detachment, for as a wise man once said, "You don't belong to me. You belong to God." Tell your partner that when he gets a little too clingy.
Bless you, Sloaney Baloney. My little girl. My little bug.

All right already!

It's only been a week since my last post, but I've been attacked by several friends for my lack of new blogging. So here's a little something short and sweet to tide you over until my super cool post is ready.

I recently read "My Sister's Keeper" by Jodi Picoult. LOVED IT! It's about a 13-year old girl who was conceived strictly to be a donor for her older sister who has leukemia. By the time she's 13, there really is little chance of survival for her older sister, but her mom wants her to donate one of her kidneys to try to save her. The doctors don't think it will work and the younger sister doesn't want to undergo the surgery. She has spent her whole life feeling like she was nothing but a supplement for her sister. So she tries to get a medical emancipation from her parents. It sounds absurd, but you really feel for the girl when you hear some of the things the mom has said. But the the story changes and you hear it from the mom's point of view and you understand why. Talk about a moral dilemma. I didn't know who to side with. You really felt for both parties. This is a good cry book. I cried from the beginning to the end. I thought it was really good. (Why do we love things that make us cry?) Anyway, I recommend it and am anxiously waiting to read another of her books that I picked up at the library called "Vanishing Acts." Anyone read this? (It was the only book available by this author.)I'll let you know my review when I'm done.

Fireflies

Tonight we went to the park with AJ. It was finally not a blistering hot day today and the sun had just set. It was actually a really beautiful evening. Twilight has always been my favorite time of day. I especially loved it back home in Utah when the weather started to get cooler and you needed a sweater as soon as the sun dipped behind the mountains. I have missed that a bit, until tonight when, after living here for almost two years, I saw my first real-life fireflies.

I have never seen them in person. For me, they have always been fascinating, almost magical. At the beginning of the Disneyland ride "Pirates of the Carribean", you float through the bayous and there are little mechanical "fireflies" that fly around. That was always my favorite part of the whole ride. Everytime we rode through there I would think to myself, "Someday, I am going to go to the south and see those for real." But after living here for this long and never spotting a single one, I had kind of given up. So we were getting ready to pack it in for the night when this little blinking light caught my eye. When I realized what it was, I could hardly contain myself. I wanted to show AJ so the three of us walked across the park and down into this wooded area and they were everywhere - flying all through the trees and shrubs. It was just so beautiful! I'm sure some people may think I am crazy, but it was really a magical moment for me.

Wedding Autograph Book

My friend Candace has a great photography business back home in Utah and just got her new website up and running. (It may be a day or so before you can view it, but please check it out.) She is doing a booth at the Bridal Show this weekend at the Southtown Expo Center, as well as one in Provo in a couple weeks. She has been kind enough to feature my wedding autograph books, which I'm really excited about. Here are a few sample pictures. The idea behind these books is that rather than having a traditional guestbook for people to sign and then you it tuck away and never open it again, you have a completed mini wedding scrapbook to display your photos, and then people can sign well wishes or short heartfelt messages on the blank pages instead of just signing their names.

I am also going to make them available on my Etsy store, where you can see additional photos.

P.S. I'm counting this as my scrapbook page for the week. ;)