Longing for spring and a new camera...

I am having spring fever...big time...I told Kris the other day that I just need to SPRAY PAINT something...ha!  I am so incredibly ready for garage sale season, and ready to open the windows and let the fresh spring air in!  I am ready to get the kids outdoors and just let them run, run, run! 

In other news...my camera died... it just will not work anymore.  I have had it for 7 years, and have taken at least 10,000 pictures with it, so I suppose it was time for the old girl to quit.  I had the Canon Rebel XT...and I took it everywhere...and took pictures with it every day.  We are working on getting a new one before Claire's 2nd birthday...which is in just a few days on the 18th!  Since I haven't been able to take pictures for a couple of weeks, I thought I might share some old ones. I recently read about a blogger who lost her home in a house fire, and she was so very thankful that she had blogged and kept so many memories online...makes me want to blog about every minute of our lives!  Hope you enjoy this random stroll down memory lane...

Our Claire with her sweet thumb, June 2011...she was about 4 months old...so tiny and sweet!

 

My three beautiful kiddos before church one day...this picture makes me LONG for warmer days!

 

Our sweet smiley girl, about 5 months old.

 

Daddy teaching Asher how to call in a wild turkey, Spring 2011.

 

My mom and dad, summer 2010, I think.  They have been married for 40 years.

 

Another picture that makes me long for spring! Vinca, my favorite "unkillable" flowers :)

 

And one more summery picture...homemade strawberry shortcake, with strawberries from Mitchell Farms...and Grandpa Mitchell's shortcake recipe! Yummy!

 

 

Front Porch Face Lift!

I have been working hard this morning on our front porch!  The weather has been so much cooler that it has had me in the nesting and sprucing up mode!  I started painting last night, and finished everything up today while Claire was napping and Asher rode his bike around me in circles (ha!) I am really excited with how everything turned out.  I am still looking for a few more garage sale finds to finish it off, but I am excited about the changes I was able to make with just the cost of spray paint and some inexpensive cushions from Walmart!  Meme got this set for us as an anniversary gift.  It was cast aside of their flea market by the owner, and she offered to buy it.  It was a little rusty and a crusty greenish color, but I dusted it off and gave it a new coat of glossy black Color Place spray paint.  I picked the cushions up for around $6 for 4 of them, and thought the red might add a burst of color. 

I also cleaned up our old park bench.  Kris and I have had this old thing since we bought our very first home in 1999.  We bought it new, but it has been dragged to 6 different houses, sometimes exposed to rain and snow, and it has survived!  The cast iron was orginally a weathered green, but I thought it might look nice in black...because that's my answer to everything...black spray paint (ha!) I covered all the wood parts up with newspapers and painter's tape, and sprayed the iron black.  Next I took all of the paper off and put several coats of redwood stain that we had leftover from our swingset on the wood parts. I was so happy about how it came out!

I also painted up a pot with our house number on it.  I have seen these on Pinterest and just loved how they looked but couldn't figure out how to add the numbers without buying them in vinyl or hand painting them...but I had a brainstorm (which doesn't happen to often to me anymore) and decided to stick on scrapbook stickers and spray paint over them.  Before the paint was completely dry, I removed the stickers with tweezers to reveal the previously cream color of the flower pot! I was excited to finally have a house number flower pot!

Hope you've enjoyed our front porch!