Eight Years Later

Happy 8th Anniversary to my Wonderful Husband!

You are one of God's most precious gifts and I love you more than words can say.

Visit Chatting at the Sky for more Tuesdays Unwrapped!

And the winners are...

Thank you to all who entered my first giveaway! The winners have until Thursday at noon to contact me...or we'll move on to the next people on the list! I hope the winners will blog about the great finds they get with their giftcard!

The winner of a $25 giftcard to TJ Maxx is...
Jen of You're Gonna Miss This !! Congratulations, Jen! Please email me your address through my profile and I'll put your TJ Maxx giftcard in the mail to you.

The winner of a $25 giftcard to Marshalls is...
Traci of Beneath My Heart !! Congratulations, Traci! Please email me your address through my profile and I'll put your Marshalls giftcard in the mail to you.

Giveaway Time!

It's not too late--sign up for the TJ Maxx and Marshalls giftcard giveaway! I made the giveaway even easier...check it out! You can sign up through Monday morning!
Speaking of giveaways...Glidden is giving away paint! Woo! You pick the color and they'll send you a quart of paint in eggshell finish. Who doesn't love free stuff?

Want another giveaway? Head over to Hooked on Houses for a decal giveaway!

And, one more giveaway! A cute triangle flag banner giveaway over at Design Dazzle!

TJ Maxx Thursday!

***GIVEAWAY IS CLOSED!***

Who is ready to WIN a $25 giftcard to TJ Maxx or Marshalls?! Me, me, me!! Oh wait...I can't win...but I can give away these great giftcards! It's better to give than receive, after all!

You have TWO ways to win one of these gift cards!

To earn TWO entries to the giveaway, join in with Mr Linky!

1. Post your TJ Maxx or Marshall's deal on your blog (or locate an old post where you raved about your finds!)
   
2. Link back to Frills Fluff and Trucks in your blog post
   
3. Add your link (the direct link to your post--not just a link to your blog!) to Mr Linky
4. Sit back and wait for me to announce the winners on Monday!

You can post about ANY kind of great find at Marshalls or TJ Maxx -- of course I'm partial to the decorating stuff, but they have great bedding, clothes, bags, and all sorts of good stuff!

To earn ONE entry into the giveaway, post about this giveaway on your blog AND post in the comment section on this post, letting me know that you blogged this giveaway!

I have one $25 Marshalls giftcard and one $25 TJ Maxx giftcard to send out to you! Be sure to come back on Monday to see if you won!

Wordless Wednesday

What can I say? He adores his big sister and wants to do everything she does...

There is more Wordless Wednesday fun around the blogosphere at The Shopping Mama and at 5 Minutes for Mom ... and probably a zillion other places!

Remember to come back tomorrow for my TJ Maxx Thursday -- be ready to link up a post of your favorite TJ Maxx or Marshalls finds and you can win a $25 giftcard to TJ Maxx or Marshalls!

Happy Dada Day!

We had a great Dada Day on Sunday. Princess and Handsome made a book for their dada and he loved it! I asked them various questions and wrote down their answers. Then they illustrated each question.
My husband loved it! I think his favorite was the page where Handsome said "My husband is the best at...balancing balls on his nosey." My personal favorite was the page that Handsome said "My dada is...old and nice." His answers were much more comical than Princess's answers...although she did tell me that "Dada's favorite animals are...kangaroos." The illustrations were great!
We went to church and out to a favorite local restaurant for lunch. It was a great day--nothing too fancy, but nice nonetheless. I hope the fathers in your life had a wonderful day!

Remember to come back on Thursday and join in my TJ Maxx Thursday for a chance to win either a TJ Maxx giftcard or a Marshalls giftcard!!

First Ever Giveaway!!

Are you ready for it? The first EVER Frills Fluff and Trucks (phew, what a mouthful!) giveaway is next week! I know you've all been on the edge of your seat with anticipation, right? After all, I've been blogging for over a year and have never done one of these.

To make up for not giving anything away on my 100th post (oops!) or my one year blogiversary (oops again!), I'm giving away TWO giftcards! Will that make up for my poor etiquette in missing these major blog milestones? I hope so!

Every one here in blogland loves a good deal--especially me! Remember those topiaries I snatched up at TJ Maxx in an after Christmas clearance? I just love that makeover and those topiaries were such a steal of a deal! I was at TJ Maxx last week and saw so much great stuff--lots of cute little tables, big letters to hang on the wall, and I even picked up a Ralph Lauren polo shirt for Handsome for $5! So cute!

Soooo...how about a $25 TJ Maxx giftcard?

Oh heck, let's do a $25 Marshalls giftcard too! That store is chockfull of goodies too!
All you have to do to be entered into the running for one of these giftcards is to come back here on Thursday, June 25th and join in my TJ Maxx Thursday linkfest! Post a link to a blog post where you show us your best TJ Maxx or Marshalls finds! Sorry, HomeGoods doesn't count...I'm still bitter that we don't have one of those near me! Everyone who posts their finds is eligible to win!

Wallflowers -- have you seen these?

I'm sure I'm not the only one who loves the HGTV show The Stagers. Tonight I was catching up on my Tivo shows and saw a really neat decorating item on the show. After a short Google search, it seems that I'm behind the times and these aren't all that new. I'm sharing them anyhow though...because they are that neat! They are Wallflowers by Umbra.
Yes, they come in other colors, too! Anyhow, they're magnetic! You hammer a magnetic pushpin into your wall and then stick the flower on it.
And there are dragonflies, too! They call these Wallflutters.

They might be too modern for my home...I can't quite decide. I do really really like the white flowers though.

Just truckin' along...

I'm still here, just incredibly busy and TIRED! The addition is mostly done--we just need to have the electrical inspection and final inspection plus have the hardwood flooring guy come out and fix some minor problems with the finish on the vents. And, of course we have to finish the detail work inside as well as repair all the landscaping outside and paint the outside trim. Okay, maybe it isn't almost done!
Painting this trim is a big ol' PAIN!! It is wide, so brushes leave brush marks and foam rollers don't do the job either. I went out yesterday and bought a paint sprayer, so now we're trying that--except just taping the trim off (which I already did) isn't enough when you use a sprayer...so now we're using rosin paper to seal off the floor and the walls from overspray. It takes FOREVER!! We finally started spraying the first windows last night and....it looked horrible!! I was fed up and had my husband call a painter (yes, on a Sunday evening!) to hire him to come do the job for us. However the guy was really nice and gave us some tips for the sprayer, so my husband tried those and it seems to be going better now. Blah!

Apart from the addition, life still is moving at full speed for us. Princess started swim lessons and seems to be a little fish! She's had four lessons thus far (they meet twice a week) and she loves it!

And, of course, she still does ballet, gymnastics, and soccer too. Way too many activities if you ask me! Swimming lessons will stop at the end of summer unless I can get her to give up gymnastics.

Handsome does soccer at the same time as Princess (on adjacent sections of the field) and his favorite thing is to be the goalie. That's pretty much all he wants to do!

And amidst all these activities, we still have to squeeze in lots of unstructured playtime!

We've had speech therapy and swallowing therapy appointments too, as well as a trip to Children's Hospital to see Handsome's GI doctor. Whenever we go there, we make a day of it and do fun things in the area. On this trip we stopped at our favorite outdoor mall to play. There are wonderful outdoor fountains there for children to splash in!


So as you can see, we are BUSY!! I miss blogging and visiting all of you--I haven't forgotten you!

Construction Progress

While we were on vacation, work continued on our addition--here is what we returned home to find!
The little landing on the back of the house was almost done. Hopefully we'll be able to leave it in place when we (in a year or two) build a deck onto the back of our house. It's a nice cedar and is very solidly constructed.
This corner is where we'll (eventually) tuck a deck.
The house REEKED when we got home. According to our neighbors, the flooring guys literally left about fifteen minutes before we arrived home. And...they worked until midnight a few nights. Yikes! Apparently the neighbors (three houses away!) could hear them. Whoops! Luckily our neighbors knew we were gone and don't blame us for the noise.

One of the things I'm excited about is that we had them do picture frame trim around the floor vents--and then we also have removable wood vents. Much better than the metal vent we used to have set into our old (tiny) wood floor area. When we had that old floor done, we just didn't even think about having wood vents.
This is the view from the front foyer area through to the new space. Look at all that light coming in!
Speaking of the foyer, I'm excited about a small change in here. We already had wood floor in here, but it stopped right at the edge of the door...which made it hard to get around the door without going on the carpet. We had the flooring guy add three extra rows of wood when he was adding all the other wood flooring. Then he sanded and stained everything. It looks good without taking up too much space from our small "formal" living room.
Here is the fireplace wall with the three square windows.
And here is one final shot. This is with my back to the wall in the new space and looking toward the kitchen. SPACE!! Lots of SPACE!

More work has been done in the past week--but we've done a fair amount of it, so I've been too tired to get pictures edited! It is looking great and is almost done!!

We're Back!

We're back from our vacation at the coast. Actually, we've been back since Friday, but I'm still getting into the swing of things around here. We had a FABULOUS time!! Ahhh, it was wonderful! Great weather for this area of the country and lots and lots of time to dig in the sand.
This is my new favorite picture...I love the happiness here! Princess just was laughing her head off and my husband caught the giggles from her.
We went for a ride on train that went right along the water's edge--and the cars were totally open and exposed to the sea air. (We're on the train in the laughing picture up above.)
And, of course we spent LOTS of time on the beach! And yes, typically fleece coats were necessary...but it was sunny and warm for this time of year in this area!
Which isn't to say that my insane five year old didn't *want* to go and jump the waves! Brrr! My husband was the lucky one who got to take her in. The water temp was maybe fifty degrees...maybe!
We even saw pelicans diving for fish!
Loads of gorgeous sunsets, too!
Happy, happy children!
Although the laughing picture is my favorite picture...this next one is a close second...more because it actually turned out after all my contorting to try to get in the sun flare as well as the shadows. Love it!
Oh and they dug lots of holes. LOTS! So I took LOTS of pictures of them like this...
So of course after you dig holes down to the water line...the next thing to do is to stand in them!
Yup, happy babies!
We did manage to break away from the beach on occasion. We went and toured a cheese factory--Handsome wouldn't stop mooing the whole time he stood behind this cutout!
And we went geocaching, too! Look at how HUGE this tree is in comparison to my daughter! It's the largest tree in the state we were in! HUGE! We found a geocache hidden in its roots.
I did manage to get another towel picture this year, too!
We had SUCH a great time!