Reader Mommy

1. Awakened (House of Night book 8) ~ PC and Kristen Cast

2. Storm Front (The Dresden Files Book 1) ~ Jim Butcher

3. My Fair Lazy: One Reality Television Addict's Attempt to Discover if Not Being a Dumb Ass is the New Black, or, a Culture-Up Manifesto ~ Jen Lancaster

4. Songs of Love and Death - Various Short Stories

5. A Game of Thrones (A song of Ice and Fire Book 1) ~ George R. R. Martin

6. Queen of Babble - Meg Cabbot

7. Bloodfever - Karen Marie Moning

8. Faefever - Karen Marie Moning

9. Black Heels to Tractor Wheels - Ree Drummund

10. The Twilight Saga (counting all 4 as 1 since I read them so many times :) and it was all considered one book borrowed...)

11. Wicked Lovely - Melissa Marr

12. Dreamfeaver - Karen Marie Moning

13. The Host - Stephenie Myer

14. My Horizontal Life - Chelsea Handler

15. Shadowfever - Karen Marie Moning

16. I am America and So Can You - Stephen Colbert

17. 13 Little Blue Envelopes - Maureen Johnson

18. Water For Elephants - Sara Gruen

19. A Clash of Kings (Song of Ice and Fire book 2) ~ George R. R. Martin

20. The Peach Keeper ~ Sara Addison Allen

21. Dead Reconing ~ Charlaine Harris

22. An Echo in the Bone ~ Diana Gabaldon

Currently Reading

The First Lost Tale of Mercia - Jayden Woods...a nice quick short story to follow up Echo in the Bone, that one took FOREVER to finish, literally I have been reading that one since last year :)

Goals and accomplishments

Sooo many posts to get to, Vacation, Raspberry picking and Irene among the ones on my mental list, but I have other lists running through my head right now so I figured I would get those out first :)

between Vacation and Hurricane preparations, my to do list kinda over took me so I figured I would stop adding to it every two minutes and just take a minute to step back and breath for a bit, and came up with a list of goals for next month...these things have been on my todo list for forever without a date for completion so I figured if I put a date with them they *might* actually get done

Goals for September

Finish child proofing (door knobs, toilet, fridge, microwave and bathroom cabinets)

Get all bathroom *stuff* out of the tote its been in for a year, organize and put away

Finish chalk boards and hang on wall

hang Art hangers on wall

rug for living room

hang curtains in living room

paint littlest Misses room

purchase and hang curtains in littlest misses room

make and hang curtains in little misses room

paint bedroom

put down boards in attic and get special clothes up there

And it's working already :) so far Goals I have Accomplished...

Picture wall in living room

Finish Art hangers

Hang Art hangers on the wall

Hang Kitchen Witch up

Donate girls clothes...

Basement apartment update!

Even as I type this there is more finishing going on downstairs in Grandma's apartment :) but I thought I would share these with you anyway...

Crown molding is going up tonight in the bed room :)

The stove is out of the living room and a couch now sits down there in stead, but you get the picture.

Cassie just loves running around on the carpet since she doesn't have any up here and I don't think she really remembers the old house.

Oh yea and check out the awesome tiled entry way...

Counter still needs to be cut and installed as does the sink and upper cabinets, but you get the picture...

And the hardware Grandma picked out to add a little bling to the kitchen...they came from Target of all places, gotta love that place!

Presents

I just love getting presents in the mail even when they are for giving rather than receiving :) and even when it won't be given or used for about 6 months and even when I'm not the one doing the giving...

Laurie Berkner Band is coming to town the day before the Little Miss's birthday so it seemed like the perfect Christmas/Birthday gift for her from grandma Handy.

She will still be to young to see anything but a bunch of paper if she were to unwrap them but the show will be awesome for our little Dancing Queen!

(and P.S.thanks Marci for the heads up so we could get the tickets!)

Lemon "One"der cookie with the Little Miss

Ahhh I can't wait until I can have both my girls in the kitchen with me baking cookies and cakes and all sorts of goodies :) I can just envision all the sticky messes we will make lol

We got our first taste of it on Monday :) while supper was bubbling on the stove I decided to try out a quick cookie recipe that one of my friends had pinned...(it was this recipe for reference)

The recipe for the cookies couldn't have been easier...one box of lemon cake mix, one tub of cool whip and one egg (hence my nick name of the "one"der cookies...)

The best part of this though??? The Little miss helped out!! It was so much fun :)

The Results?

Were yummy, chewy, lemony goodness :)

Quiet Toys :)

I've been working for a while on some "quiet" toys for the Little Miss to play with on the way down to TN and so far I have a grand total of three completed...yep out of all the ideas in my head and all the projects I have started a total of THREE completed...ah well she's not getting them until we set off so they are nice and new and interesting so there's not really a rush on them so I'm pretty happy to have any completed at all lol.

First up we have an I spy bottle I first saw the idea for this on Pintrest :) and I love how it turned out...grand total ~ $3 - $1 for the bag of rice and $2 for a cool set of thumb tacks I ran across in Staples that were famous world icons (big Ben, Statue of Liberty...etc) that I just couldn't pass up...

I dyed some rice a hot pink color and then went to my box of "someday" objects...you know, the cool extra buttons that came with a sweater, that awesome pair of earrings where one went missing but someday you would find the other so you couldn't part with the one you still had, that charm bracelet you had in 7th grade, the hair clips you wore to prom...those objects...and poured them in a water bottle with the rice, shook the bottle up, glued the top on to prevent a mess of catastrophic proportions and there you have it!

Next up Marble Mazes! I found this one some where blog hopping and then again on Pintrest... lesson learned from this one? I totally cannot sew...like at all...but practice makes perfect right? good thing these aren't going to be sold or given as a gift, but but they will do the purpose for keeping the little miss quiet (I hope...) actually I think I am going to keep these in my purse so I can pull them out when we are grocery shopping when she starts getting fussy... total cost for this project? $0! I cut up her crib bumper and used some other fabric that I had laying around :)

And last (for now) but not least, a magnetic color matching game :) I got the idea for using paint sample cards for the colors from (SURPRISE) Pintrest, but I made up the rest as I went along...Total cost for this project? $2.10 (I had to buy a full box of magnets, but I used so few of them I couldn't justify the cost of the whole box on just this one project so I did a per magnet price :) ) Paint samples were free, ribbon I had and the block came from our basement renovation scrap pile :)

Since these "toys" will be used in the car I wanted to make sure all the pieces were attached, so I grabbed some ribbons and glued them to the magnets.

All three came out pretty well I think hopefully they will do their job and keep the little miss entertained! More to come soon (I hope...)

2 Month and 18 Month Stats

Ooops looks like I totally forgot to post this :( ah well guess better late than never lol

The Little and Littlest Misses had their 18 month and 2 month appointments last week, here are the stats!

The Little Miss is weighing in at 26 Pounds now and 32.5 inches tall putting her squarely in the 75 percentile for both

The Littlest Miss is weighing in at 11.9 pounds and a whopping 24 inches tall putting her in 75th percentile for weight and 95th percentile for height!

Kinda sad I never recorded the info for the Little Miss when she had her well child checkups, but at least we are doing it now! Plus our new doctor gives us a sheet each time with their stats and what shots they got so we can put it in their books (which I should really get started...) it's kinda neat!