Weekendings

This weekend we finally completed all of our London shopping!!  I plan to do at least three  detailed blog entries about all of our preparations, recommendations, etc... and of course plenty of pictures once we return, so stay tuned for that!

A few other projects are underway that I/we worked on this weekend. 

Troy's 30th Birthday Party! 

I went shopping this weekend to find napkins to spark some creativity on the color scheme for Troy's upcoming 30th birthday party! I tend to start with fun napkins when coming up with a color scheme for a party.  Random, I know. But so far it's worked every time! 

Of course I'll have a full and detailed entry after his party at the end of the month.

Storm Door.  We went shopping to price storm doors. I really want one for our front door and hopefully we'll have decided on one and purchased/installed it prior to Troy's birthday party!

I'm at it again...

I'm working on a frame project (which I also hope to have completed before Troy's birthday party).  I've purchased all of the frames (thanks to an excellent BOGO 1/2 off home sale at Target a few weeks ago), and now that I have my mock up to live with for a few days, we'll be ready to start hanging the frames in no time!!  Then I'll have to FINALLY print out some wedding pictures of family and friends to go in the frames.  Only took me four years... aw well!  I'm really excited to show you all how it turns out!  The wall gallery in our room is done, as far as the frames being up, but I am waiting until we get back from Europe to finish that wall so that I can add a good bit of our London and Paris pictures to the wall gallery in our room.  I'm sure we'll add at least one to the living room gallery also. Updates on both galleries to come!

Welp folks, those are just a few ways that I/we spent my/our weekend.  Shopping, cutting up newspapers to do a mock up on the wall and now a little bit of work.  I'm posting this blog as a work break, but now it's time to get back to billing some hours!! 

More to come!, 
SG 

To Quote Ice Cube...

"Today was a good day!"  (Not everyone is going to get that! ha!)  But anywho, as I've mentioned, 2012 is going to be the best year yet! So much to look forward to! Welp, one of those things is the birth of little Baby Airline.  Our friends Eric and Sonja are expecting their first son, due one month from today!  I'm going to be an auntie...AGAIN! 

So, why was today a good day? Well, Sonja invited me to come with her to her ultrasound!!! Not only did I see little Blueberry's face in 3D, I also heard his heart beat!  Sure, may not be a big deal to you, but it was a HUGE deal to me!! I. heard. his. heart. beat!  Amazing.  Tears were shed from my eye balls. 

p.s. I call the baby Blueberry (1) because he was the size of a blueberry when I found out that he existed and (2) Eric and Sonja are keeping his name a secret until he makes his grand appearance so I can't call him his real name yet (i.e. I don't know it!).  

So anywho, today was a good day!  Blueberry is perfectly perfect! Six pounds and one ounce and growing just right.  I'm so excited for him to get here so that I can love all on him!! I'm going to be an auntie!

I heard his heartbeat ya'll,

SG

Upgrade

Our new camera arrived last week! With the London/Paris trip slowly approaching, we decided that we needed a new camera to capture all the loveliness that we are expecting to see!  With that in mind, we went with the Canon EOS Rebel T2i for our new family camera.  We have a lot to learn, but we tested it out this weekend on a trip down to Atlanta to visit the family and celebrate my mom's upcoming birthday.  

Troy and I hope to catch a class before London so that we can get the most out of the fancy new camera.  I will say, even with my simple "no-flash, point & click" pictures (like the one above!) this weekend, the quality is one million times better than my usual iPhone and small digital camera pictures! 

See...

 

Miyah loves her some Uncle Troy...but hey, I can't blame her! He's so lovable!

Also, Miyah is crawling ya'll!!! I could not believe it! She is crawling (fast!!) and puling up.  That means, most likely, the next time that I see her, she will be walking.  Oh goodness, what's next, college?! Too fast!  But anywho, as you can see from the last picture, I took mom to Ici Paris, the same spa we visited last year for her birthday, for mother-daughter massages! It was great!! 

We ended the day with dinner at Flip where I had the one-of-a-kind Krispy Kreme milkshake! 

Oh, and speaking of delicious sweet things, mom also requested my famous lemon cupcakes with lemon cream cheese icing.  My friends request that I bake this more than anything else so I actually hadn't baked them in over a year to give them a rest.  This camera (we've named the camera Lea after the fabulous photographer who did our wedding pictures) took the best cupcake pictures I've ever taken! And again, this is just on a basic "no flash" setting.  I have not even come to understand all of the personalized settings.

 making the icing...

So, I realized, mid-baking, that I was out of piping bags and cutting a hole in a ziploc bag to use my piping tools failed, so my bootleg attempt to ice the cupcakes was just cut a hole in a Ziploc bag and squeeze the icing through the hole...

After chilling in the fridge over night. Packed and ready to go to Georgia...

Also, let me just say this--this was my first time making cupcakes with Gretel, my stand mixer.  WOW!! So much easier!!!!!!  I almost didn't know what to do with myself when I wasn't personally mixing things with a hand mixer! So great!!  Stand mixer = yet another major upgrade!

Yay for the upgrade (and double yay for an excellent Saturday),

SG

Miyah Comes to Visit

Now it's time for me to play catch up and dish about some of the funnings that have been going on.  The first weekend in February Troy and I kept our then- 5 month old niece.  This was our first time ever having an infant in our home overnight!  So here's a summary of what went down...

The Good

Miyah is just lovely! I love being an auntie so much and being able to be a part of her life since day 1!  She only cries when she's hungry or you try to get in her nose and de-clog it.  

My BFFs are the BEST! Charity and Regina visited and we took turns on Miyah duty while the other two of us worked on cooking a big family dinner!  Troy also pitched in too! It really was one of the best weekends of my entire life! Family, friends AND food. Doesn't get much better than that.

The Bad

Having to wake up at 3:00 a.m. and 5:00 a.m.  But seeing Miyah made it all worth it!  She is just so precious!! Have I mentioned how much I love being an auntie? So really, no "bad"....but there was some ugly! More on that below!!!

 3 a.m. doing happy baby pose! Literally. It's my least favorite yoga pose.

7a.m. wide awake

The Ugly

The poop!! And LOTS of it.  Miyah is teething and I am told that means runnier and yuckier poo.  Well, there were many encounters with yellow poo and that was NOT my cup of tea.  I changed a lot of diapers!  

And here is a picture of Charity cleaning poop off of her skirt because the poop sometimes escaped the diaper!

You see this picture below?  It was taken on Sunday morning just before leaving the house to head to Sunday School.  Well, literally 3 minutes later in the car, those nice white tights were filled with yellow poop.  And I had to change her as soon as we arrived to church.

But who wouldn't love this face?  Even with all the poop!

So grateful to be an auntie,

SG

p.s. speaking of being a proud auntie, I must brag some more on my niece Mekala (remember her from this post and this one) she's been chosen as her high school's representative in a Medical Conference to be held in Atlanta this spring and I am just so proud of her!!  Have I mentioned how much I love being an auntie? Just making sure we're clear on that...

Guess What We Just Did?...

I'll give you a few hints...

Any guesses? :-)  Welp folks, we just booked our tickets on the EuroStar which will take us from London to Paris later this year!!! The Grants are going to London and Paris!!  We're super excited and it's just one of the MANY amazingly exciting things we're looking forward to in 2012!!  And I have so much to share with you so stay tuned!! 

I can't wait to share every thing that I've learned so far!  I hope that it can be a help to anyone out there looking to travel to Europe in the near future! For now, I'm off to get some rest. 

Au revoir!,

SG

picture sources: London's Tower Bridge, EuroStar, Eiffel Tower

I Am Alive...

I promise. And I am still a blogger.  I have fun post ideas dancing in my head and they are on the way.  I just have to make it through this week and I will be somewhat back to a normal schedule and can get back to writing!!!

Forgive me?
SG

Music To My Ears!...

Gretel's First Spin!! 

I love her!,

SG