Emskyrooney

LP is 6 and a half months old which means I'm two weeks overdue for posting his 6 month photos (which I'm still editing!) and a little update about what he's been up to lately.  I'm going to try to get it posted this weekend but we're heading out the door to a friend's first birthday party so it will have to wait.. In the meantime though LP cut his very first tooth this week!   We thought a bottom side tooth was coming as there's some evidence of those teeth but the front bottom tooth surprised us and popped up almost overnight!  Looks like the next door neighbor will be showing up any day now too! Here are some pictures: All Smiles!!! See my tooth???

Thought this was a pretty cute commercial!

We were busy busy busy over Memorial Day weekend.... Saturday morning we had the husband of one of the women who makes Paul's coffee for him every morning (hello Honey Dew coffee shop girls!) stop by to check out our house- he's a house painter by trade and our house needs to be painted.  I think we've decided to hire him which I'm excited about- the other option was painting the house ourselves which would have taken us all summer.  He's going to start this Thursday I think and is estimating that it will take about a week! Saturday afternoon was a little rainy so we spent a few hours while LP napped working on painting the family room in the basement.  The difference a clean coat of paint made down there is amazing!  Will have to take some pictures! After LP woke up we headed over to Lowes to look for a washer and dryer- ours work but they came with the house and are at least 25 years old and very inefficient and all of the Memorial Day sales were too enticing to r...

These were my other possible entries for the I ♥ Faces Photo Contest- which is your favorite??

I've been reading a blog called I ♥ Faces   that has a photography contest every week.  I haven't entered before but thought that I'd start with this weeks contest.  The subject this week is "favorite photo ever."  It's a tough decision as there as sooo many pictures of LP that I just love but after much debate with my mother and my husband (all of three of us had a different favorite) I finally chose my favorite (see the next post for the other contenders!)  I chose the photo of Little Paul below because I love how his personality REALLY shows in this picture!  This photo is from about a month ago when he was 5 months old and he was obviously annoyed that I kept snapping away..... Too funny! "I am submitting this photo into the www.iheartfaces.com Blurb Book photo contest. I am granting I ♥ Faces permission to use my photo in a printed version of a book for commercial use and possibly advertising of a photo book on both the Blurb and I ♥ Faces we...

We have big plans for our little house, both inside and outside.  As it's been getting nicer out we've been working more and more on the outside plans- talking about what we'd like to do, sowing grass seed where the above-ground pool used to be, clearing out under bushes, that sort of thing.  By the end of the driveway we have two little fences and two giant rocks, one on either side.  When we moved in they looked like this: Last summer my mother helped me clear them out and put some plants in.  Now they look like this: Closer to the house we haven't done much except add some mulch and some pachysandra around the two red maples that flank the driveway (you can see one in the photo above).  We've cleared out under the bushes alongside the house and have trimmed back the rhododendron a bit but that's all we've done.  Here's the front now: Plans are as follows:  Paint house- we're thinking a grey-ish, green-ish, blue-ish color (very specific, I know!) w...

My mother sent me a link to this video - cracked me up!

One year ago today I started my little blog (ok, I actually started it on May 5 but moved it to its current site on May 12 and forgot all about that old wordpress blog, so technically it's 1 year and one week....)  In the past year I've posted 181 times which is about every other day- not too bad considering how infrequently I've been posting lately!  Hopefully I'll be able to keep posting at this rate for the next year! Thought I'd post a few pictures from my very first Mother's Day.  We really had a nice day.  My parents sent me some rose bushes, Paul's parents gave me a lavendar plant, Little Paul made the cutest garden stepping stone with his name and footprints in it at daycare, and I received lovely cards from both Pauls... I didn't QUITE get to sleep in but I did get to go to Homegoods and TJ Maxx ALL BY MYSELF (and was good and didn't buy anything!) which was nice.  We had a great dinner (Paul smoked a whole chicken on the smoker, we also had...

I love to read.  It's something I inherited from my mother and from her mother before her.... I read fiction, non-fiction, biography, cookbooks, anything I can get my hands on.  As a child I used to stay up late at night reading under the covers with a flashlight or crouching in the hallway next to the nightlight....  There are books in almost every room of the house- non-fiction in the living room, fiction in the office, childrens books in the nursery, craft and sewing books in my sewing room.  To me, books are part of what makes a house a home..... When I'm reading I often come across passages that speak to me, and I like to copy them down.  Usually I scribble them on bits of paper or in random notebooks only to lose track of them.... Last week however I copied down a passage from The Red Tent by Anita Diamant which I thought was fitting to share on Mother's Day today.  The main character is talking about the birth of her child: "There should be a song for women to ...