The red room solution

The house we bought has a red dining room. For those of you who know me - or have ever been over to any of my various homes over the years - I do not have anything red. I am certainly not opposed to the color - I just don't have anything remotely resembling that color.

So, when we moved in - I was presented with this dining room dilemma. I mean - the dining room is a major thorough fare in our house. I really wasn't up for repainting a perfectly good room.

Thanks to countless hours of HGTV - I decided to cover up some cheap(and I do mean the "as is" section in IKEA cheap) picture frames($1.99/frame) with this fun and funky fabric from IKEA that has all the colors of our house in it. I bought a yard for the "art" and a yard to make pillows/pillow covers for when our sectional finally arrives.

All in all - it was a whopping $14 solution! I must say that I am quite happy with it. If we ever decide to invest in some real art - I won't feel like I wasted this $$.

PA vacay - 2010

We've just returned from our summer vacation with Mark's parents. We all had a wonderful time. Last year we were able to stay three weeks. This year, we could only stay one and a half weeks. It's so nice to know that we are only 9 or so hours away!

Matthew is totally in to puddle jumping these days. We had a really good rain for him to take advantage of! And, yes - that is Mark and his 32oz milkshake!

We went to Knoebel's and enjoyed the train again, we were also able to go to an arcade and a farm!!

Thanks, again for everything, Grandma and Grandpa E. (and Precious)!!

Random days

Here are some random pictures from the last week when my parents visited.

Here's our backyard. Mom and Dad put many hours into it!! I'll put up better pictures in the future. Mom and Dad E. took care of getting us settled inside - and Mom and Dad H. took care of getting us settled outside. We have been so blessed!!

We were shown a wonderful ice cream shop called The Parlour. YUMMY!

Matthew fell asleep for a wee bit as we were coming into Ann Arbor from IKEA :o)

The new hangout

So, these are words that I never thought I would here uttered from Mark or anyone else..."We need to see if Mackey got out of the washing machine before we go to bed."!! Yes, this appears to be his new refuge from life.

He seems very curious about the dryer now whenever it's open - I guess we'll have to watch out for that, too.

ONE indredient ice cream

Believe it or not - I just made ice cream with one ingredient!! It was so easy, too - and healthy. I got the recipe from Apartment Therapy - one of my favorite sites.

I do recommend using very ripe bananas - mine were spotty - but not spotty enough. They tasted a tad "green" - but - it was still pretty amazing to me that it would have turned out so good. I did add some Nutella to it for Matthew - he seemed to like it. I also had added just a little honey while the food processor was doing it's thing.