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Bean and I have moved to a new online location.  Please visit us at pinkieBEAN.

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It's Time for a Change

Changes are coming to Pinkie and The Bean. I've been mulling this over for quite awhile now.

I have decided to stop posting here. Bean is 6 now and this blog was originally created as a sort of online baby book for her. In the past I have delved into crafts and the like but I always felt that the main focus of this blog should be about Bean. But now that she's getting older, I'm trying to decide exactly how much to share here. I write the blog but she doesn't really have much say in what I put here. To be honest, I'm not sure she even realizes there is a blog. As she gets older she might not want so much of her life posted up and I have to respect that.

I also felt restricted in how I write. I'm not perfect. I don't strive to be. I use bad words. I tell sassy jokes. I am human just like the next person. But I always felt that here I should mind my manners and that sometimes felt like it was holding me back on the things I wanted to share.

Having said all of that, I've decided to begin in a new direction. I am going to start blogging now at pinkieBean. I know that's not a big change but the focus will be changed. If there is some Big Bean news, I will likely post it here from time to time. pinkieBEAN will be a place I can share thoughts on my life, my ideas, my projects with a little bit of Bean thrown in.

I have imported all of my old posts from here to pinkieBean so that I can keep my standing in some blogger sites I belong to but it is a new site and a new outlook. So please, if you are interested in continuing on or starting a new journey with me, visit me at pinkieBEAN and add that site to your readers, emails, Facebook, Twitter, whatnot.

Thank you all so much for every time you chose to spend a few minutes of your time reading our stories and sharing our lives. I hope to see you on the new path.

 

Bean's Sofia the First Birthday Party

 Bean wanted to have a Sofia the First birthday party this year. We knew of a local bakery that does birthday parties but we could not arrange a date that would work so on a suggestion by a co-worker we decided to do our own bakery party. This is where my fellow bloggers come in. So many bloggers are so generous to share their own projects and ideas and this year it really helped us with our party. I stole copied borrowed many great ideas found on Pinterest and through the magic of Google!

Going with the Sofia the First theme, I started looking around for invitation ideas.  I found a  a ton of Sofia party ideas at 3 Little Greenwoods.  I wish I could say I was also able to keep my party costs at $75 like she did but I couldn't.  Using the wonderful free Sofia the First party printables shared by Peonies and and Poppy Seeds, I made similar invites using ribbon I already had on hand.  I only had to purchase the sparkly cardstock for the backing paper of our invites and more envelopes.  Using a great coupon at Michael's,  I was able to put together our invitations for $9.

 I also used the foldable place cards to label our drink station and activities.  You can see one I made to display the Amulets of Avalor that I made after finding this great tutorial from Handmade Happy Hour.  I actually won a Mod Podge contest awhile back and it contained some of these Mod Podge Podgeable Shapes and some Mod Podge with glitter.  I had to purchase the gems for $2.34 at Hobby Lobby but I was able to use ribbon I already had on hand.

 The Welcome sign came from this set of free printables by Seven Thirty Three.  I wanted to make the welcome sign a little prettier but ran out of time so it got slapped onto a blank canvas with some glue dots.

Bean's cake was made by a wonderful lady named Bonnie who runs Bonnie's Cakes.  I found her through a fellow mom friend and come to find out after the party that Bonnie is friends with our aunt.  It's a small world!

 

We served "pink tea" a/k/a strawberry lemonade and water.  No food though.  Just cake and ice cream.

I don't have a picture of them but I used my Silhouette and cut out pink and purple tiaras that went on the water bottles.  I stole borrowed this idea from Catch My Party.  I found an idea on Etsy of dressing up plastic goblets for the pink tea.  Bean put Sofia stickers on each one and I tied the little bows.


After my friend suggested we do our own bakery party, I started looking for ideas on how to do this without it becoming some big huge mess.  We bought two jumbo muffin pans at Target and made our mini cakes the morning of the party.  Word of advice to anyone considering your own bakery birthday party - go to your grocery store bakery and ask if they will sell you some un-iced cupcakes instead.  We were afraid we hadn't made enough so Hubz went to our local Publix and was able to buy six for $2.50.  If I had known that beforehand I could have saved a lot of time and effort.

I found these cute cupcake boxes marked down at Five Below - $4 for a pack of 3.  I bought the cake decorations at Kroger, Target and Jo-Ann's.  On Pinterest, I stumbled across the idea for using paint palettes to hold the cake and the decorations.  Each princess got their own so there was little mess and no fighting over decorations.

 As you can see Princess Bean really enjoyed decorating her cake.

 I loved these floral arrangements found on Pinterest so I made my own version.  I painted the inside of some of Hubz' mason jars and made rolled felt flowers.  I will have a tutorial on how I made these shortly.

The princesses made princess bookmarks and colored princess posters I found at ConsumerCrafts.com.  The princesses got to take home their cake creation, and the bookmarks and posters.  These all served as the "goody bag".

I used the "Now We Are Six" sign that I made earlier to decorate the gift table.

 This was a totally fun party!  I think all of the little princesses enjoyed it.  I need to thank the beautiful Princess Hannah for helping me keep all of the royal guests entertained that day, Princess Melanie for helping me find the location and set everything up the night before and with the dreaded clean-up after, and also a thanks to Princesses Kimberly, Ashley and Justina for chipping in, too.  And of course King Hubz for all his manual labor.  You all helped to make Bean's 6th Birthday the best!

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I'm linking up at the following parties.  Please stop by.

SugarBee Crafts
Funky Polkadot Giraffe
AtoZebra Celebrations
Twirl and Take a Bow @All Things Heart and Home 
The Thrifty Home
My Girlish Whims
Gingersnap Crafts
Seven Thirty Three Inspire Me Wednesdays
Free Pretty Things for You Pretty Wednesdays
Made to Be a Momma





 

And so this happened...

And so this happened last week...

We were the victims of the Polar Vortex.  Polar Vortex.  Who came up with that?

I got a call from a neighbor saying that water was running down our driveway and she didn't think that was normal. 

Neither did I.

By the time my father-in-law got there, he said water was coming out of the front windows onto our front porch.  This is where I left work "supa fast".

Thankfully there wasn't that much damage.  Since there were so many victims of Polar Vortex, this happened on a Thursday but no one could get out to our house until Saturday.  Hubz and I moved out all the furniture and ripped up the carpeting and padding.  Now we are waiting on the insurance company to see how nice they want us to fix the room up. 

I wanted new flooring but I was good with waiting. 

Now We Are Six

Happy 6th Birthday to my beautiful Bean!

I'm a winner at Whimsy and Stars Studio!

I entered our Christmas card into Whimsy and Stars Studio Christmas Challenge and I won!

Yay!  I am very excited because now it's time to start on Valentine's Day projects.

Will 2014 be different?

Totally "borrowed" this from DollDiaries.com

Goodbye 2013!

2013 was not the greatest year I've had.  I am grateful that we made it through it relatively healthy and happy but I'm still glad to have it behind us and hope that 2014 is better all the way 'round.

There are things about myself that I'd like to change in 2014, or endeavor to change at least.

Here are the things I don't much like:

1.  Disorganized

I am disorganized beyond belief.  At my age, which is none of your business, I would have thought I'd have a better handle on things like "where's my junk".  It's everywhere.  I hate having people over to my house because it's so cluttered and disorganized.  I don't want the Beanster to grow up thinking that it's okay to be this way.

And it's not just stuff, it's things that we need to do, get done, or already did.  I am always surprised when I look at a calendar and realize I don't have the two or three weeks to work on something that I thought I did and now it's due tomorrow.  Or if I do actually do something in advance I can't remember later if I actually did it or not and have to bother others with the question "did I...".  I completely forgot I had sent in payment for a field trip for Bean last month and resorted to bugging her teacher the day before to find out for me. That's not cool.

One thing I've done to try and help in this area is to start a home calendar.  I printed off this 2014 calendar made by Handmade Home and have put it into a binder.  This binder will remain (hopefully uncovered) on our kitchen bar for everyone to access.  Everyone as in me and Hubz.  I have already sat down with the calendar and filled in upcoming events, written checks for the entire month of January for Bean's activities, and placed frequently used forms that we use for her school in the front pocket.  I will try to get some stamps and extra envelopes in there soon, too.

2.  Unhealthy

Both Hubz and I are unhealthy.  We do not exercise unless you call college football trash talking "exercise". He roots for the Georgia Bulldogs and I occasionally root for the Oregon Ducks.  Yes, I know it is strange for someone that hates birds so much and yet I root for a team with a bird mascot.  To be honest, I don't like them because they are the Ducks, because they are from Oregon, or for any one player.  I probably can't even name one Duck player really.  I root for them because they change their uniforms every week. Show me a girl out there that can't get behind that idea and I'll show you a girl that needs to have her girl card revoked.  Anyhoo...

We be outta shape unless you count round as a good, healthy shape.

I have already signed myself up for 3 virtual races in January, one for February and one for March.  What is a virtual race you say?  It is a race that you sign up for online and usually there is an entry fee that is donated to a charity.  Most races have a specific time you have to complete your run, or in my case walk, and you are required to either post a picture of yourself on the run or submit your times using an app like MapMyWalk.

I have also signed both Hubz and I up for The Color Run in Atlanta in April.  I am very excited about this one.

We still need at least two more folks to complete our team so if you're interested, please let me know.  I hope we have a blast doing this.

I have just found out that I have a touch of the vertigo.  I can't tell you how not fun this has been. So far it has not stopped me from getting out of bed but it has been pretty scary when I'm driving. I also found out that my heart rate is high. After spending a few days checking this, it runs between 105-107.  I am told that normal for a female is in the 80 range. Mine is only near that range right after I get up each morning. My family on both sides has histories of heart disease so I want to try to get this lowered.  I have an appointment with an ENT and hopefully these races will help with the pulse.

3.  General cleanliness

A lot of this has to do with the disorganized chaos of our lives.  I am a clean person but there are things in my house that I will let go for weeks on end. Again, this is not the legacy I want to give Bean.

I have decided to try and follow along to the tips found on A Bowl Full of Lemons Getting Started page.  This weekend I want to try and put a hurtin' on the kitchen and try to rediscover the surface of the counter space.  I got a really great gift from my brother-and-sister-in-law and I have no place to try it out so this is a priority.  There are a ton of things in the cabinets that need to find new homes.

4.  Sticking to plans

Last year at this time I dedicated myself to reading 75 books within the year and completing a scrapbook challenge.  I got 40 books read and 1 layout done.  Woohoo me!

This year I have signed onto read 40 books in the Goodreads 2014 Challenge and I have also joined the book club at A Bowl Full of Lemons.  I would be well on my way to enjoying this book if my car's cd player would eject the old CDs already but it's not budging.

2014 Reading Challenge

I'm off and running!

April has read 0 books toward her goal of 50 books.

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0 of 50 (0%)

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Gee, that sure looks like a long and complicated list.  Maybe I should have stuck with something like "give up lima beans".  Oh well, I'm gonna give it a go and see what happens.  I am hoping to keep myself accountable this year.

Did you make any resolutions?  It was the lima bean one, wasn't it?

Happy 2014!