Archives for September 2011

After arriving home from vacation last Tuesday night, I knew I had to get down to business.  I have a very large order list and lots of people waiting for their items.  I don’t like to make people wait…it kind of stresses me out.  So I got busy and am still busy.  I promise I am working just as quick as I can.

This first order was placed by Angie in Tennessee.  I actually completed this before we left for vacation.  Angie wanted a special 15×30 canvas for her preacher and she wanted all of the church staff to include messages on the canvas.  Here is what we came up with.

All staff member signed the letters in Grateful.  I was super pleased with how it turned out.  Thanks again so much Angie.

This next order was placed by Amy in Tennessee.  Amy wanted a large order of key fobs for some special women in her life.  Thank you so much Amy.  Hope everyone loves them.

Abra in Alabama ordered this 10×10 canvas.  She wanted a special wedding gift for a music loving couple.  Thanks again Abra and hope the couple loves their so thoughtful gift.

This 8×10 mockingbird canvas is headed to Jen in Arkansas.  Thank you so much for your business Jen…totally appreciate it.

Jessica in Kentucky ordered this sweet little key fob and camera strap.  Hope you love them Jessica.  Thanks again so much.

This sweet fabric bracelet was ordered by Laura in Mississippi.  Thanks so much Laura.

This order is headed to Amber in Indiana.  Amber wanted two girls taggie blankets, a peace sign key fob and a 5×5 dragonfly bow holder.  I hope everyone loves their gifts Amber…thanks so much.

This set of key fobs and 11×14 canvas are headed to Gretchen in Nebraska .  Thanks again so much Gretchen.

And lastly, this 8×10 and 12×12 Name of Jesus canvases were ordered by Bethany in Tennessee.  Totally appreciate it Bethany…hope you love them.

We will be having our 10 Months Waiting Art Giveaway this Friday, so check back.  I have been thinking and thinking about what I am going to do, so hoping this is the best one yet.  We shall see.

Hope everyone had a great weekend.  We sure did!

Happy Monday!

Our last day in Florida was a super rainy one.  It consisted of fun things like movies, homemade play dough, yummy treats and lots of play time indoors.  Aunt Linda and Uncle Tom even watched the kiddos while Josh and I went out for a little daytime date…Thanks Nina & Baba!

Some of my favorite moments on this trip consisted of big family meals every night with Nina and Baba.  My Aunt Linda is one awesome cook and she would not take no for an answer.  I loved us all sitting around the table eating together.

All of my aunts cook and they’re not your average cooks either.  A.M.A.Z.I.N.G in the kitchen.  Our family even has their own cookbook.  It’s a treasure, for sure.  I noticed while in my Aunt Linda’s kitchen over several days that she had lots of quirky, odd bowls.  Tons of little weird bowls and I decided I wanted to have odd, quirky bowls as well.  She gave me this little gem to start my collection.  I’m pretty stoked.

Don’t be jealous of my plastic compass ring.

I also liked learning how this was my Aunt Linda’s best towel 🙂

To say that it we had a great time would be a complete understatement.  Thank you Nina and Baba for letting us invade and sick our crazy wee Kelleys on you.  You were too kind to us and we love you tons.

We took the car ride home easy…no rushing, just embraced that yes, we would be in the car for the whole day and yes, we would need to stop about 4 times to go potty.  I thought 4 wasn’t too shabby.

My favorite things about traveling with small Kelley kids were as follows:

Sol’s book reading position and the very concentrated look on his face while reading.

Our middle console contained scissors, tape and balloons.

Harper’s craftiness is not limited by being in the car and strapped in her car seat…you just cannot contain her craftiness.

And the boys will always be boys, no matter where they are.  Monster guys named Roth can take over anywhere…Huddy even went all crafty on Roth’s face.

It was seriously a good, great, grand, wonderful vacation.  Thank you, Thank you, Thank you Nina & Baba!

And next year, well next year will be even better.  Better than good, great, grand and wonderful.  It will be something along the lines of stupendous and out of this world.  That’s what having your family all together for vacation will do.

Happy Friday!

We ended up only getting to play on the beach twice and our second trip was a bit shorter.  There may have been some sandblasting of the legs on our 2nd trip…my legs are very exfoliated now, but we were determined to be at the beach as long as we could.

Josh ended up seeing the rain coming in the distance and we made a mad dash for the car…extremely sandy and wet and cold…running like mad.  A towel escaped, along with a car sand toy and one of our small children, who shall remain nameless, took off after it in the parking lot.  All the while another small child of ours, got hit in the head when the wind blew the car door shut, while a parent was chasing down the child who took off after the towel and sand toy.  It was very funny after the fact.

We headed back to Aunt Linda and Uncle Tom’s after some lunch and a trip to Walmart.

Fun Fact About Ft. Walton Beach:  There Walmart is C.R.A.Z.Y.  Seriously, the craziest, busiest Walmart I have ever seen.

We spent the rest of the day curled up watching movies in Uncle Tom’s (my kids affectionately call him Baba) movie room…it is crazy, awesome.  Harper’s favorite movie choice during vacation was Mary Poppins.  She is a sing songy kind of kid, so Josh and I were not surprised.

The rest of our vacation was full of Tropical Storm Lee, rain, rain and more rain, but no worries from the Kelley crew.  We checked out one of the million touristy Florida shops…AKA Alvin’s Island.  The kids got their sword fight on in the store and loved the rock selection.  We came to the conclusion that the store deliberately placed all the play swords right across from all those awesome souvenir mugs and shot glasses…you break it, you buy it.

The kids played an extremely interesting game of “Guess The M&M” with Aunt Linda (affectionately called Nina).  She completely made the game up, but contestants were rewarded with M&Ms, so it equaled lots and lots of fun.  And if you didn’t know better, you would have thought it was a real game.

We attempted to make it to the beach one more time.  It went a little like this…Drove to the beach and headed out…

Didn’t even touch the sand and down came the rain and whoosh went the wind and everyone took off running back to the car.  Baba was the only one who actually touched sand that day.

Our evening was spent with homemade pizza (which Nina cuts with scissors…I was very perplexed by this) and cosmic bowling.

My Uncle Tom (Baba) even got us all a free game of bowling because one of his past students was working and gave him free passes.  How fun is that?  And it was cosmic bowling…I LOVE cosmic bowling and so did the kids.  This was their first time to bowl and they pretty much rocked.

The giant crane candy machine probably had something to do with their excitement as well…heck, I was excited about the candy crane too.

Everyone was a bit tired, but oddly enough, my kids don’t get mean when they are tired, they just get loopy.  We always know when Sol is tired because he is extremely clumsy, like has a hard time standing, and this was one of those nights…they were just a bit wacky, but had a very good time.

And some how, some how, Huddy beat me.  I didn’t even realize it until we got back home and I had a chance to look at the pictures.  Maybe it had something to do with all the wrangling of loopy kids, while keeping them out of the people’s lane next to us and making sure no one got their fingers or toes smashed with a bowling ball along with all the “dazed and confused” lighting, while rocking out to some 90s music…maybe that was it…at least that’s what I’m going to keep telling myself.

No one should get beat by their 2-year-old at bowling…no one.  A re-match is in the works.

Happy Thursday!

We arrived back home from vacation last night and boy was it a wonderful, much needed 5 days.  I have a few more vacation posts and if you have emailed me and I have not responded yet, I will TODAY.  I told myself I was going to try and stay away from my email while we were away and I did a pretty good job.

After our Thursday late/really early Friday morning arrival in Florida to my Aunt Linda and Uncle Tom’s house and after we were filled in on all the Tropical Storm Lee jazz, we knew that if it was not raining in the morning, that we needed to hit the beach asap.  And that is exactly what we did.

I have to say right now that if you even get the chance to go to the beach during a tropical storm…I actually recommend it.  Weird, I know, but it was like perfect beach weather for kids.  Am I tan…No!  But we did not have to worry about sun burned kiddos, it wasn’t blazing hot and yet, the water was like a bathtub.

The water was clear and the waves were ginormous, which meant the tide was coming way up.  There were several big jelly fish that we even got to examine.  I may have stepped on one and almost thrown up because of the feeling of that squishy jelly-fishness in between my toes…I’m weird about textures sometimes.

This particular jelly fish was about the size of a basketball.

The wind was really blowing, but it was warm.  We seriously were kicking ourselves for not bringing a kite.

The kids adored the sand.  They could have easily played for hours, upon hours in the sand.  We built sandcastles, made moats, buried Josh, Huddy and Sol and made sand pies.

Notice the birds…this picture was taken after the following…

Also, by recommendation of Aunt Linda, we fed the birds.  Ummmm, huge mistake.  I recant Aunt Linda’s recommendation, unless you like the feeling of being in the movie, The Birds.  We started off with a pack of stale crackers and one little sea gull.  Josh warned me, but I did not take heed.  We fed that one bird and instantly we were surrounded.  I seriously did not and still do not understand what happened.  It was like sea gull ESP.

I wish I had taken a panoramic pictures of just how many birds were surrounding us.  They were everywhere and literally surrounded us.  Huddy started yelling at all the birds, but the birds were not phased.  Soon all the kids were running and yelling and became small bird herders.  The birds just would not leave, but would run in a different directions.  An hour later, they were still there.

We had to be sneaky with our snacks.  Those dang birds were persistent and unmannerly.  They did not care that we were not willingly sharing anymore.  And while sneaking a snack, I discovered this…

Even Cheez-Its dig mustaches.  It made me smile.

Our first beach trip was a success…birds and all.  We washed off and headed back home just before the rain set in.

It was the good, sandy start we were looking for in a vacation.

Happy Wednesday.

When we set off to visit my Aunt Linda and Uncle Tom in Florida we thought we had this whole traveling with 3 small children under control.  We thought we were prepared.  We thought we had a full proof plan.  We thought by leaving at 3pm this would help make the long 7 hour trip easier on the kiddos and that Josh and myself would be just fine staying up a bit late…I mean we were going to be in Florida and asleep by midnight…we were.

After traveling for several hours, we decided to stop around 6 for dinner.  The kids had drawn and colored and needed to stretch their legs.  We laughed pulling in saying, we were definitely the typical travelers stopping at Cracker Barrel to eat.

Laura Kelley Fun Fact #11:  I worked at Cracker Barrel when I was in college.  Their goal is to try and get you in and out in 30 minutes.  Not always the case…especially with 3 small kiddos.

Unbeknownst to us, this short dinner stop would cost us an additional 2+ hours, not including the time it took us to eat, and an extra 120 miles…All because of a small wee one’s blankie that fell out of the car and into our parking spot and we drove off without even noticing.  Over 2 hours, 120 miles and after going all inspector gadget on Cracker Barrel’s, we were back at that same Cracker Barrel.

This sweet lady said, “I could tell it was important.”  She has no idea.  Josh and I laughed as we discussed what all we just had done to get this blanket back.  But it was definitely worth it.

So our plan was shot.  There would be no arriving before midnight…how about after 2 am.  I promised Josh I would stay awake with him…I will not go to sleep…I will not go to sleep…I will not go to sleep.

An asthma attack for Huddy and a total random radio station helped with staying awake.

Thank goodness to for this random 100.7 radio station.

Turns out we hit the jack pot with 100.7.  They were only playing TV show theme songs and so began the challenge to figure out what show went with every song for the last 2 hours of our trip.  It did not disappoint.  And I may have won.  And our vacation may not have started out like we anticipated…but it got better…Tropical Storm Lee and all.

Happy Labor Day!

This week has been C.R.A.Z.Y!  Super, super crazy, busy, and I am so ready for some vacation and I’m ready to let this week go.  Check ya’ later, adios. Hasta luego.

This is how Sol and myself started today off…

this should say a lot about how my day was yesterday…I am an emotional eater.

Sol is the tinyest of kiddos…we are encouraged to give him high calorie foods…ummm, Sams pizza and giant cherry icee…check and check!

Harper and Huddy are a bit sad about missing out on special lunches and other yummy treats while they are in MDO.  Last night we tried to make it up to everyone with slushes from Sonic…kids are so easy.  I wish adults could fix problems with slushies…that would be amazing.

If you can’t tell, Huddy had to pee.  This was right before he peed on Sol’s hand in the bush behind him.  Boys, boys, boys.

And lots of orders have headed out this week.  These two cheerleader birthday tees were ordered by Karen in Michigan.  She wanted special tees for her little girls birthdays coming up.  Thanks so much Karen and hope their birthdays are wonderful.

This 10×10 canvas was ordered by Lovelyn in Indiana.  She loved this text and I was happy to make this up.  It is always so fun to make something brand new.  Thank you so much Lovelyn.

This little key fob is headed to Melissa in Mississippi.  Thanks for your business Melissa.

These Africa tees were ordered by Ginny in Texas.  Thanks so much Ginny and hope your special day is here before you know it.

And this piece I made up for a sweet couple in our lives.  Just wanted to give them a little something to say thank you for being so good to us.

That’s about it for around here.  I officially closed for new orders this past Monday.  My current order list is insane I tell you, insane.  Thank you again for all the support…I can never say that enough.

Happy Thursday!