Park...

Jay loves going to the park. Sometimes he stares longingly wanting to go outside:)

Last weekend he got to go to the park with Grandma and cousins JT and Camille. Aunt Davina brought her camera.
Some fun and sillyness ensued.

"chea-tee (JT) you are so awesome! You have a cool bike and you are fun to chase around."

"mille (Camille) you and I love to giggle together!"

"Thanks for letting me wear your helmet and ride your tricycle so much while I was here. You deserve a kiss for that"

"or whatever this is"

More spring break pictures

Monkey made an appearance outside...

And just when I said..."time to put monkey inside"...this happened. Monkey got a bath (and we aquired a back-up monkey from Davina, so this made it easy!)

Riding "bike"...kind of.

He loves to "wiing"

Swinging with daddy.

Horsey.

Of course this is why he is smiling so big:)

Davina's friend Lisa and I (she is due a week after me).

"you seriously want me to just stand here?"

Cousins!

"knock knock, anybody home?"

Children's Museum

I am pretty jealous of my sister-in-law's new camera.  It is awesome!  Here are some pictures of Jay she took yesterday at the children's museum.

And a few I took:

Jay at one and a half

I have been cleaning the basement lately, so Jay has stayed busy jumping on his tramp.

 I bought a big bag of smarties, and hauled up the Easter eggs, so we have had an Easter egg hunt like every other day (with one smartie in each egg) and he gets 6 eggs each hunt.  We mostly hide them in his bedroom.

 We have been baking together...this is his first "licking of the frosting beater" experience.  Today when he was putting the marshmallows in the rice krispie bars he took a bite of one and said "nummmy".

 He also LOVES driving the car (and pushing all the buttons).  He cries when we get home and I try to take him in the house right away took cook supper instead of letting him playing in the car.

 He also LOVES playing with the "choo-choo's" in the basement.  Here grandpa is setting up a new track for him.

Attack of the Tumbleweeds

We have had a super windy day today. We went out but were back before 11am, and I am glad, because the tumbleweeds have been attacking. My father-in-law and I just threw all the tumbleweeds that made it over the fence (during the last windy day) back over the fence yesterday...that was pointless. John told me it would be, but I didn't listen. Here is a view of our BACKYARD. These are the ones that made it over the fence today!

Jay found it all very interesting:


More pictures of this past week to come.

Jay's Sports Orange and Navy Bedroom

I'm finally happy enough with the results of Jay's bedroom to take a few pictures!Disclaimers: The frame that it came with was the wrong size, so we are still missing the headboard, foot board and bed skirt, but it still looks pretty great!

 Here are 5 black and white pictures of family members playing sports: Grandpa and his brother playing football, John running a 1/2 marathon, Angie playing volleyball, grandpa running a 1/2 marathon, and uncle Chad playing soccer.  Tebow is in the middle...partly because none of the pictures I could find were good enough to print an 11x14 print, and partly because we wanted a picture of Tebow in the room.  We don't care that he got traded, he is still a bronco in our hearts! (I did get a better matte for the Tebow print since this picture was taken).

 The Denver Bronco's hanging lamp that John had in his room as a kid.

 Football beanbag I got from King Soopers Marketplace.  I came as just the bag for $13.  I was going to try and find cheap filler, but I decided it was too much work and bought the $8 bag of filler balls.

 This is the lamp that Jay had in his monster room.  Also the scrapbook page I did for his monster room can stay behind the door because it is orange.  The football Sentsy warmer is something I bought for Jay.  His babysitter sells Sentsy and I thought this one was perfect! (Sometimes the room smells like diapers, so it is a good thing!) The canvas print of our family is the one with a flaw in it, but it is nice for him to have a family picture in his room.  The clock is one of my current projects.  I saw a cute orange clock at Kohls, but it was still $14, and I didn't know if I could spend that money, when I might be able to paint it or another one.

 The "J" was on Kohls clearance for $5, The balls are either from garage sales, or from my collection of balls that we actually use.  Hanging is Jay's Tebow Jersey.  Not sure what we will do with it yet, but it might still fit him this year, so I don't want to frame it.

 The bear is "brown bear" from Kohls, but I found this awesome navy and orange football uniform for stuffed animals on this ugly dinosaur at the ARC, I washed the uniform, put the clothes on a cute animal, and threw the dinosaur in my garage sale pile.  The helmet came with a christmas tree attached to the top and I got it for 90% off at hobby lobby.  We detached the Christmas tree and Walla! (I blogged about that one HERE.

 Top to bottom: The navy wicker baskets are from Michaels, the wire one is from the ARC.  I bought some small balls to display in the baskets, but Jay always wants to play with them, so they usually are not in there.  The scarves are from clearance at Walgreens (I think they were $3 each).  The tiny broncos mascot was a present from grandpa and grandma Shaler.  The basketball sign I got at Hobby Lobby on clearance (but it was still like $16).

Whew.  Still to do:
Figure out a good place for books and socks.
Paint the step stool to get up to his bed navy or orange.
Replace a few pictures or picture frames.
But....right now I have decided to work on the nursery instead:)

Art for the nursery

I saw this on Pintrest the other day:

Source: rosenberryrooms.com via Angie on Pinterest

and decided that I could make something like that in Photoshop very easily.  (I have Photoshop Elements 6.0)

Here is how I did it:

Cool lines tutorial

1.                  Open a photo.  If it is color – go to enhance- convert to black and white. Choose ok.
2.                  Drag current layer to new layer to create a new layer with the same picture on it.
3.                  With the new layer selected, go to edit- define pattern. Name it and hit ok.
4.                  Throw new layer into the trash by dragging it there.
5.                  Go to filter- stylize- find edges.
6.                  Press control+I
7.                  Bring up levels by pressing control+L
8.                  Push dark slider in a bit to get rid of small gray areas. Then click ok
9.                  Go to the brush tool and choose a normal brush.
10.              Paint out the extra lines that you don’t want to show in your image (around the sides if they are not needed).
11.              Choose the magic wand tool. Make sure “contiguous” on the top is unchecked.
12.              Click once in the white to select the whole area.
13.              Do control+J to copy the selected area into a new layer.
14.              While still on layer 1 choose filter- blurr- gausian blur
15.              Choose a number that gives it a good blur (4-7 is usually good for normal size pictures)
16.              Go to adjustment layer(half black and white circle) and choose pattern
17.              In your new layer, click in the white box.  Make sure your background color is black, then press Control+backspace.
18.                  Choose adjustment layer (half black and white circle) choose solid color.  Pick a color.
19.                  Under layers, choose the blend mode COLOR.

Here are my finished pictures: