A Sunday Outing

Joseph decided he wanted mall Chinese food for lunch today (I know, right? Our mall's Chinese is pretty good though), so we headed to the mall to eat and walk around for a bit. I find it strange that the only non ethnic restaurant, besides a place that just has subs and fries, in the food court is Chick-Fil-A (which isn't open on Sundays). For this reason we stopped at Wendy's on the way to pick Hudson up some chicken nuggets.

I mean, shut. up. Sweetest face ever.

 Trying on some Bama shades. We chose to forgo the purchase. ;-)

 I don't ever post my outfits ('cause let's face it, I'm in yoga pants, and I've never done yoga in my life, and t-shirts a lot), but I liked this one I wore today and thought I'd snap a pic. Yep, Hudson prints ALL over that mirror! Whoops!
Top, Jealous Tomato - Polka Dots & Pearls Boutique
Necklace - The Blue Door Boutique (promotion, now sold out)
**Both of these boutiques are awesome. Check 'em out!** (I'm not being paid to promote them, just thought I'd give credit where credit is due!)
Skinny Jeans - Target
Sandals - Target (old)

HA, I also never take self portraits, and wanted one with Joseph but he kept making goofy faces so I just took one of myself. Lame, I know.

This guy was SO tired and knocked out for the entire 12 minute drive home.

I mean, could not hold his eyes open....

And one would think he'd just go right down for a nap once we got home....nope. Took an hour to get him back to sleep. Lovely.

While we were at the mall, we stopped in this store, ABC Toys. It is awesome! They have some great toys but also tons of educational tools and toys as well. I know where most of Hudson's Christmas will come from this year! We picked him up a little animal puzzle but I left it in the car so he didn't get to play with it today. I think he'll love it. I want to make Hudson's playroom up with a few different learning centers(music, building, reading, science, etc) and this place will be great to get the things I need.

I hope you all had a nice Sunday too. We ended our day with crock pot roast and veggies and a little building time with the Legos.

I wanted to share this video I took of Hudson this evening sorting his shapes. Too cute!

Sorry for the loud TV.

Y'all have a great week!!

Don't forget to click the button on the left of the page to follow me on Twitter! :)

Growing It Out.

Let's talk hair. You may or may not have noticed that I'm growing mine out. I've tried this a few times over the last few years and it always ends within several months because I get tired of it and just cut it off again. I haven't had long hair (long to me, anyway) since Joseph and I got married. Even then it wasn't what most people considered "long". It was to me, though. I've had my hair mostly in a short bob for about 4-5 years now. I'm tired of it. I miss my hair and decided back in January or February to grow it out. This time, I'm doing it the right way.

Before when I'd try to grow it out, I just wouldn't get it cut. At all. Which is obviously not very smart. I ended up with damaged, split ends, and thick, bushy hair. This would, in turn, lead to me saying "I can't stand it anymore. Cut it off!" Smart, huh? So, I've been getting regular trims and shape ups, about every 10 weeks, and have been laying off the flat iron and hair dryer when I can. This has really made a huge difference and I've stuck with it now for 8-9 months. I've probably got at least another year or so before it's where I ultimately want it to be but I'm proud of the progress.

I also read this blog post with tips on growing it out, as well as this one. I found them via Pinterest.

Here's where it was at the beginning of the year.

This was taken middle of Feb, so I had probably already been growing it for about 4 weeks by this point. It started in a short bob.

May, about 3 months later....

3-4 weeks later, beginning of June....

End of June

End of July

Middle of August

Middle of September

(Can you tell I'm a little obsessed with the yellow bubble necklace??) ;-)

Goal...

(length/cut, not color)

I don't want it terribly long(believe me, I don't have the time or patience to style super long hair), but I've got a good 4-5 inches until I'm there. I really like the 2 above cuts. I need layers, because I have a LOT of hair. It has to be layered and thinned out every time I go. I'm already liking how it looks so far. I have naturally wavy hair, not that you'd ever know that, and it's looking MUCH better in its natural state now that it's longer. It did NOT look good shorter. A hot MESS! I've actually worn it wavy a few times the last couple weeks because it looked half decent. This is really helping me keep the heating tools off of it. I'm thankful that my hair hasn't gotten that coarse, dry texture a lot of wavy/curly hair has. I condition every time I wash(every 1-2 days) to help keep it moisturized. And I've never colored it or anything. That helps too. I didn't always have wavy hair. When I was growing up, it was straight as a board and wouldn't hold curl for anything. My dad's did the same thing. Stick straight, then shortly after high school it seems that it started getting some wave in it. Weird huh? Now it's hard to keep straight. It's very sensitive to humidity! This is why it's up a lot in the Summer.

Maybe in 6 months to a year it'll finally be at the length I'm wanting. I just hope I don't go through all this growing out just to chop it off the second it gets hot next year! ;-)

I hope you're having a great Saturday! RTR!! (I hope I can stay awake for the 8:15 game...might need an extra cup of coffee!)

High Five for Friday!

Woohoo! Friday is here! Ready for a good weekend of quality time with both of my boys. This week went by surprisingly fast...to me, anyway. Once again, I'm linking up with Lauren at From My Grey Desk for my favorite things from the week. 

1. My September Birchbox came, as you are aware. It's always a fantastic surprise to see what goodies have been packed for me. I didn't think I would really care about it, but I am LOVING the hair tie. It's so comfortable in my hair and doesn't pull it at all. I'm very tender-headed(my husband makes fun of this saying) and this is huge for me. Maybe I'll purchase some after all...when this one bites the dust. I've been using this one almost 24/7.

2. OK, I promise every Friday post won't have coffee creamer in it. Becoming a mother also made me become a coffee drinker. I don't really even think caffeine has much effect on me, but just that jolt of strong coffee in the morning, I need it! I'm not faithful to any particular brand, and I just get whatever brand is on sale when I go. Last week, it was International Delight (3/$5 AND I had coupons, score!). This Cinnabon flavor, Holy Moses, is outstanding. My favorite ID flavor BY FAR!!! Literally, a cinnamon roll in a cup!! Try it, you'll thank me.

3. Season 9 of GA premiered last night(after what felt like a 4 year hiatus!!) and although I'm happy it's back, I just don't wanna talk about it, except that I'm about to talk about it so I just lied. ****WARNING: If you haven't watched it yet, do NOT read the rest!!!***

 I really thought Mark was going to make it. I knew Eric Dane wasn't going to be with the show long this season, but I thought he'd wake up, recover, and decide to leave the hospital. I did NOT think he'd be gone in the first episode. DISLIKE!!! And poor Arizona. She and Callie just can't catch a break! I'm anxious to see next weeks' episode, where they show what happened after the crash. This season is going to be an emotional roller-coaster. :/

4. I decided to join the Twitter world yesterday. So far, I'm really liking it. I'm not sure if I'll stay with it regularly, but I'm hoping I do. You can follow me @LarPuckett

5. I love that Hudson loves "Bry Bry" as much as he does. They are such good buddies and I love that Bryant is so good with him. I hope they have many years together.

Y'all have a super duper weekend!!

Wordless Wednesday - Playtime Picture Dump

 

 

Bedroom Wall Collage

OK, I know I said I was going to share some cute photos of Hudson outside yesterday but they can wait until tomorrow. I finally got the wall collage in our bedroom done this afternoon and just had to share it. I kind of put it to the back-burner to get a few things done in the playroom (which was more important) so I picked the project back up and got it finished a few hours ago. I'm very pleased with how it looks. And if I'd known how easy and fast it was going to be, I would have knocked it out weeks ago. The whole collage thing scared me a little bit, because I can barely hang a single picture level and evenly spaced. ;) BUT, thanks to Pinterest I found this little tutorial on how to hang a wall collage. I've seen a few other tutorials but this one looked the easiest for me. I didn't do it exactly the way she did, but I used the same idea.

First, I laid it all out on the floor and decided how I wanted it to go. This took longer than actually hanging the thing!

After I had it the way I wanted, I used a sheet of copy paper for each frame, tracing the frame and cutting it out to fit if it was smaller than the paper. For the big piece I had to tape pieces together. Next, I flipped the frames over(you can hold the paper in place as you do this also), laid the sheet of paper on it, and poked a hole in the paper where the nail needed to go.

The next part was the trickiest, because I had to figure out where they actually needed to go on the wall. I wanted the collage centered between the curtains. To be honest with you, I didn't even use measurements to determine where to put them. I just eye-balled it and started with the big piece, making sure it was pretty close to eye-level, then I taped the other sheets on the wall, according to how they were placed on the floor earlier. Since I'm not perfect (I know, I was shocked too. ha!) I did have to adjust it to the left a little bit but that just required minimal work. I didn't really measure anything, just placed and stepped back to see how it looked. I would normally be more precise but I used the sheets to my advantage on this one. I DID make sure the two frames on the right were level with the big piece on the left, and just centered the others on those. It was really easy and didn't require a lot of adjusting.

After everything was lined up correctly and it all looked centered, I just hammered nails in the wall where I had poked holes in the paper, then tore the paper off the wall and hung the pictures. I used a few big Command strips for the big piece, because it doesn't have a place to be hung. Luckily, it's very light.


Voila!

I got all of the wall art online. I wanted to add a little color to the room so I used a couple different shades of blue. I don't have links to the sites I got them from, but if you just search for this stuff on Pinterest, you'll be able to find it. I love the middle picture. It's a picture from our wedding made of lines from The Notebook. You can make your own here. You upload a picture, type in your favorite song lyrics, verse, quotes, or your wedding vows and it forms the picture using those words. You can personalize the color if you want, and adjust the contrast of the picture too. I liked the black and white look. The big piece came from TJ Maxx for about $16. I love it.

I really like the fact that I can change out the art as I desire. I also like that it's not perfectly symmetric. (obviously I need to straighten the top right picture in the frame, it's a little slanted, huh?)That's the beauty of a collage, it's fun and doesn't have to be perfectly even and symmetric to look good.

Now, my plan is still to make this wall a sitting area, with a chair to match the chevron ottoman, a little round table for a book or two, and a floor lamp. I'm not in a hurry to get that finished, because the playroom is my top priority right now. I've still got some things to do in there and I'll worry about finishing our room when it's done.

Happy Tuesday!!