Happy St. Patrick's Day

Taylor made this Leprechaun hat at school and he followed little leprechaun foot prints into the woods with his class to a pot of gold! They also make leprechaun pudding and had played "Lucky Charm" bingo!

This my very own "green baby"! Not exactly the Incredible Hulk, but much cuter!

Sophie had 3 plates of green eggs and ham. I have to say it did bug me a little that the eggs were green. The leprechauns also dyed the milk green . Katie asked me the night before if the "lepers" were coming. Thankfully they did not, just the leprechauns!

Here are some pix from our St. Patrick's Day. I had so much fun dying the shamrock biscuits and cookies that I also made Green Eggs and ham (with spinach) for breakfast on St. Patrick's Day. I also make green cupcakes (and mini cupcakes). It was fun! I think I'm a little like Percy Jackson's mom (except with green instead of blue).

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Here are some pix of our St. Patrick's Day green biscuits we had last night with dinner (really great buttermilk biscuit recipe from America's test kitchen) and the St. Patrick's Day cookies I made this morning. Also is a pic of the nana's apple cake that Rachael sent me. I really don't

miss the stress of preparing for parties with Tastefully Simple, but I do miss the food! Yum Yum! Thanks Rachael. I made it on Sunday and it was finished of last night! So yummy! I would have loved to make cherry cobbler with it, but out of love for Craiggle, I did not!

Last night during scriptures, Sophie fed herself her oatmeal and applesauce! She did such a great job! How exciting!!!! Way to go Soph!

Make your reservations for Chez Starkey now!

Turned out pretty good, huh? I'm not super creative or crafty, but I think that overall it looks great. Thank heaven I was mostly just in charge of decorations. It was stressful enough.

Here are is the fruit of my labors (and man am I tired). These are decorations for the "New Beginnings" night tonight at church. I will be at a Brain seminar (discussing treatments for ADD), but I'm also missing Taylor's Kindergarten meeting. (Craig is out of town, some help HE is! :> hee hee!) Why is it that mostly I have no where I HAVE to be and then I have to be everywhere all at once???

There is a fundraiser at Katie's school where you pay a bit for this fun little apple to show up in your yard! Pretty exciting! It stays overnight and then magically goes off to surprise another fam.

Sophie and Ike had so much fun (I think they had fun anyhow)walking around. Sophie seemed to want to "walk" him. He didn't seem to mind too much and they didn't fall down too often.

All the neighborhood kids meet in our backyard at our playset!

We had such a great week last week. So much sun and warmer weather, ALMOST to 40 degrees almost everyday! Funny how that feels so warm now. The sun was fabulous though. The kids in the neighborhood have been on scooters and in the back on the playset nonstop until dinner each day.

We were so excited that cousin Leisy and cousin Kent (and the boys) could come visit this weekend. It was just the pick me up that I live for! I'm so excited to know that now that we're not a million miles apart we can have more family visitors on a regular basis. What a wonderful blessing to be close enough to have them come and to have the room to have them stay! I can't wait for more visits. All the kids and parents had a great time! We hung out and played inside and outside and went for a walk on the nature preserve trail in the neighborhood and it was something I hope we get to do again many times in the future!

Here's the new curtains/chandalier!

You can't see them that well, but I replaced the dark curtains the previous owners had at the window with these indoor/outdoor curtains from potterybarn (only $26!!!). It's nice to have it a bit brighter in there and being a creature of habit, it's comforting for me to have my grommet curtains back at the slider!

Here is a pic of the dining room. Isn't the chandalier fabulous??? I absolutely LOVE the curtains also. I really adore the print. The style and the colors are all perfect for that room. The background color matches the adjoining livingroom color also.

The cabbage is crabby and ornery and feeling very low!!!

Last night Katie was her 2nd grade musical entitled "How does your Garden Grow?". It was so fun and thankfully not very long. Sophie, Taylor, Craig and I really enjoyed watching it. She delivered her line perfectly. I'm going upload a video but I have to apologize because I was trying to video while holding Sophie or Taylor or both, anyhow, you can hear her line at the beginning of the video and I was taping in the area where her class was, but for some reason she was on the other side of the stage delivering her line, so you won't be able to see her until after her line is past. Anyhow, she looked so cute in her pink stripey shirt, face paint and little flower wreath.

I also thought the pic of Sophie staring at the camera up close was hilarious!! Cute chubby baby face!

We made cookies the other night and this was Sophie enjoying her cookie, YUM YUM!!

Fina-freakin'-ly!

The master bathroom

Sophie's room

Master Bedroom

Master Bedroom

Taylor's Pirate room (sorry for the mess, pirates aren't so neat).

Katie's room (the hutch will go downstairs, but hasn't yet).

The hallway (looking from the kitchen)

Kitchen and family room

Living room and dining room

Here's some pix to show you all of mom and my hard work! Isn't it wonderful?!

and so it begins...

I have paint in my hair all the time now! I started priming the house last week. I got just about a room a day done. Unfortunately I had to take off Tuesday because of my new calling. 2nd Counselor in YW. We had a super long presidency meeting during Taylor's preschool and then activity night that night. I need to paint Sophie's room next, but she's sleeping in there and when she's sleeping is the only time I can paint, but not her room. Anyhow, I was supposed to do that this weekend, but I had to teach YW so I planned that instead and tomorrow I'm in charge of our activity. Whew. Too much to do.
The unpacking is bascially done. The house is a disaster, I'm running around trying to paint and buy hooks and window coverings and find everything a new place in the new house. I'm going to start a list of things I love about the new house so I won't be so sad about all the things I REALLY REALLY miss about South Carolina (ie: our FRIENDS, the WEATHER, a house that I was done painting, hooks and shelves and curtains already done). This house is great though (will be great). It stays alot warmer (believe it or not), the basement is so fun, great storage and fun play room, fabulous guest suite. We have canned lighting in the kitchen. The fire place is so pretty (and not drafty). The neighborhood is great, we can skate on the pond across the street and we have our very own playset in the backyard and all our neighbors have dogs and kids to play with. It's usually around 11 degrees when we walk to the bus stop in the morning, but this morning the sun was out! See, there's lots of good stuff....

Here's the master bathroom. It is all finished now, but you can see when I took the picture how dark and miserable that brown/red was.

Here's Taylor's room, I primed this one first. I'm thinking we'll do a soothing gray/blue in here. Hopefully not too dark. I really want to paint his bed red. He isn't so sure about that.