Day at the Zoo

This past weekend, my mom, sis, Noah and I went to B'ham to visit with my grandparents and my aunt Carol and cousins. On Saturday afternoon, my mom and Carol had to take care of some errands for my g-parents, so Lindsay, Noah and I went to the zoo. It turned out to be warmer than I thought and Noah was pretty hot and fussy at times. However, we had a good time and I feel like it was a good experience for Noah. Here are a few pictures from the day...

A New Profession Perhaps?

Before Noah was born, my mom took a cake decorating class with the intentions of making Noah all kinds of cakes for birthdays, holidays, etc .... well, that never really happened. I think she has decorated 1 cake since she finished those classes... but to her defense, she had been working full time up until recently. Anyways, I decided we needed to put her cake decorating tools to good use and do Noah's birthday cake ourselves this year. Here is our attempt...

We both took turns doing the icing because after awhile your hand starts cramping! But not too shabby, huh? I thought our giraffe turned out pretty good for our first try! Please note, we didn't attach his little antellar things... those have to be made with chocolate and we didn't have any. However, I would like to mention that I'm not sure you save any money going this route ... the cake pan was $12.99, the icing dye was about $3 per color, plus cake mix costs (plus any additional cost, eggs, veg. oil, ingredients to make the icing, etc). But, as my mother pointed out, the cake pan was a one time cost and we will have it to make this cake as many times as we want in the future (the pan is the Wilton Animal Crackers... depending on how you decorate it, it can be a giraffe, pig, cat, or panda bear).

Here's Noah's cake last year... maybe I can work my way up to that, uhhh...yeah right! :)

Do-It-Yourself Lampshade and Lamp

I just re-did Noah's room and have been looking for a lamp to go with the new color scheme, however have had a hard time finding something I like for a reasonable price. So, I decided to make my own and it was SO easy and turned out so cute that I thought I would share with you all, in case someone would like to try it for themselves.

First I bought a plain white lampshade for around $10 at Target. I used painters tape to trim around the area that I wanted to paint... the tape helped keep it neat and in a straight line. I painted red around the bottom of the lampshade. Like so...

Then I used blue ric-rac (found in the fabric dept with the ribbons) purchased at Walmart for around $2 and used a hot glue gun to attach the ric rac around the edge of where I painted. If your lampshade flares out, you will have to use 2 pieces of ric rac so that it lays flat when you are gluing it down.

Then I purchased a lamp base from Walmart for $10 and spray painted it red. To get a good finish, I sanded it, then spray painted until it was smooth and even. Make sure to get the right kind of spray paint for your lamp base (ex. get the paint for plastic if its a plastic lamp base). And wah-lah... the finished product!

My little man

I walked into the den at my parent's house and this is what I find...



Noah is sitting with my dad in his chair (with his feet propped up on the ottoman, just like my dad!), while watching American Idol so intently. Of course, I HAD to take a picture! Dad kept sitting him up in his lap and Noah kept squirming his way back down so his feet were on the ottoman. What a little man!

One Eventful Week...

Last week was THE busiest and most fun week and I'll start with the newest addition to the Brink family... on Tuesday, 3/3/09, my sister-in-law, Haley was induced at 12:01am. Around 1pm, she had dilated to 8 cm so the whole family got to ECM to be there. Madelyn Grace Brink was born at 4:37pm weighing in at a whopping 8lbs. 2 oz and (get this!) 22 1/2 in. long!!! She is a DOLL and has a head full of jet black hair. Such a cute baby! I took pictures of everyone as we waited for Madelyn to make her grand entrance....

And here's a picture of sweet baby Madelyn...

Then, on Wednesday, Stacey (my other sis-in-law) and I head to Atlanta for the Britney Spears/Pussycat Dolls concert. We stayed in B'ham on Wednesday night and did a little shopping. Then, Thursday morning, headed off to Atlanta! We wanted to go to Lenox Square Mall to kill some time (and do a little more shopping) before we had to check in to the hotel. However, I don't know Atlanta very well and ended up just taking some random exit b/c I was afraid I had gone to far down the interstate. We pulled over to look up Lenox Square in the GPS and turns out, we were only 5 miles away. At the mall, we realized that the time changed and we'd lost an hour and that it wasn't just 3pm, but it was 4pm and our dinner reservations were at 6! So we hurry out of the mall back to car... put our hotel in the GPS... and nothing. It doesn't have our hotel in the system so I call the hotel and the lady tells me to get on "Spring Street' and stay straight.... uh, HELLO LADY, I'm in BUCKHEAD needing to get to Downtown... it's not that simple! So I hung up and called back, got a WONDERFULLY helpful man named DC to give me great directions. And after a few wrong turns (like I said, I don't know Atlanta very well), we finally get going in the right direction... however, it's 5:00 rush hour traffic! AHHH!! We were literally going 10 mph down the interstate and then if things couldn't get worse, we realize we're out of gas, the light goes off again, and again, and again... we were seriously going on fumes in this horrible bumper to bumper traffic. I finally make it to our downtown exit and call my new friend, DC back (for I think, the 18th time) and ask him, "WHERE THE HECK IS A GAS STATION IN DOWNTOWN ATLANTA?!" Fortunately, we make it, get back to our hotel (had to cancel our dinner reservation), and very quickly changed clothes/freshened up for Britney and headed to Phillips Arena. The concert was AWESOME! Even the Pussycat Dolls were great. I sang the entire time (and lost my voice). Plus, we had great seats, centerstage, 12 rows back. I loved her whole circus theme, the special effects, everything. It was by far the best concert I've been too.

Me and Stacey at the concert

Pussycat Dolls

Ms. Britney Spears


I got home on Friday (after getting about 5 hours of sleep and driving the entire way home) and immediately begin moving into the new house. My parents, Jamie, and I spent the entire weekend packing, moving, and unpacking everything into our new house (while my sweet sister kept Noah entertained). So YAY, we are finally moved in. Noah and I have yet to spend the night there, b/c they are still working on rebuilding the steps so I'm not really a fan of staying there while construction workers are running all over my house (not to mention being woken up at 7am by hammering) however Jamie has stayed there a couple of nights. I still have ALOT of putting away to do... I have pretty much finished all the rooms that I can, but there's alot of boxes in the guest bedroom upstairs that I need to take downstairs, however, I can't begin unpacking things that belong downstairs until the construction people are finished completely. So here are the "after" pics... please keep in mind, things are still out of place, boxes are laying around, and everything needs to be mopped, vacuumed, dusted, etc... but at least you'll get the idea!

Before & After Entryway

Before & After Den -- the pictures are from different angles, but you get the idea.

Noah's room-- waiting on comforter to arrive (hopefully tomorrow) but it will match the sham that has the fish on it ... I don't have a "before" picture of Noah's room from this angle

Before & After of ofther side of Noah's room