Warning: I'm Advertising for Uppercase Living!

That's right, I'm doing my own free advertising!

As many of you know, I have started selling Uppercase Living. If you haven't checked it out yet, you really should. It's an amazing product, if I do say so myself. I have put many around our house and love them! They are vinyl expressions that you can apply to just about anything: glass, walls, wood, mirrors, etc... AND they are removable without damage to your wall! Anyway, I have been working on a few giveaway items and Christmas gifts and wanted to share them. (Hopefully the recipients are not reading this.) The gifts I have pictured below are very inexpensive to make and you can personalize them which makes it even more fun! If you are interested in ordering anything, orders to be received by Christmas must be placed by December 2nd! You can check out the link above to see the whole catalog with hundreds of phrases, word or embellishment expressions or go into MyDesign Tool to design your own sayings or initials.

This one is in my living room. It says HOME in black and "where your story begins" in mocha brown. That's right, you choose the color(s) for every expression you want!

Glass blocks from Menards= $3.24/each
4 inch ornament embellishment in soft gold=$4.00

(all embellishments are $1.00 per inch)
Spool of ribbon =$1.00-$3.00
Letter P made on MyDesign Tool=$1.25
(4.5 inch, Chocolate Box Font)
Total for ornament block= $8.24 plus leftover ribbon
Total for letter block=$6.49 plus leftover ribbon

These 4x4 tiles below are from Lowe's. I made them into coasters by adding cork pads from the Dollar Tree on the bottom-on each corner. Then, I added a personalized look by creating a 3 inch M in MyDesign Tool and a 3 inch embellishment, both in chocolate brown. I made a total of 4 coasters, 2 with M's and two with the embellishments to make a nice set as a gift.
Total cost for the entire set= $9.30

Quick trip

Last Wednesday, Hadley, my mom and I headed down to Nashville for a few days. We stayed with my sister and she graciously hosted an Uppercase Living show while we were there. I also attended a Regional Conference for Uppercase Living and saw some really fun ideas. We had a fun time and the littlest cousins got a little playtime in. Drake got to stay home with Papa Ken and Nana for a day and then got some good daddy time. These are a few shots from the week.

Celebration

This morning, I told Drake that we were going to go to Lincoln because today was the day that Papa died last year so we were going to go take Grammy out for lunch. He said, "So, you mean we're going to celebrate Papa with Grammy?" I said, yeah that's a great way to put it. Then, he said "Let's have coffee at Cracker Barrel because that's what Papa and I liked to do." That really made me smile because that is a perfect picture in my head. However, our plan kind of back fired because I thought we would make this a surprise to my mom and just show up. But it seems some of her friends had already made plans to take her out for the day so we missed her! So, instead we made a trip by the cemetery and then went and had a little play date with the Stuckeys. Drake did get to talk to Grammy on the phone this evening though and we found out that Kara and Bart made an honorary trip to the donut shop today in memory. I'm so glad my dad liked to eat fun things!

Drake-o-lantern

We took advantage of our Monday off by carving a pumpkin. This was Drake's first attempt at carving. He was very excited about it before hand and really wanted to make a pumpkin pie with it too. However, as you can see from his face, after Gabe got the top of it off, the insides really grossed him out. So, we just baked up the seeds and made a nice looking Jack-o-lantern. Drake also planted two of the seeds in the back yard and checks every day to see if there are pumpkins yet.

Dress up

Had's turning into such a girl! See for yourself...

What a difference a year makes!

Here are some fun pictures from our trip to the pumpkin patch yesterday. I also put in some similar pictures from last year to show you just how big of a difference a year makes...
(the pictures on the left are from last year!)

























We've had a few life changes in the past year, just to recap:
-Hadley learned to crawl, stand and walk
-Hadley learned to talk, with her word count growing every day
-Hadley had her 1st birthday
-Drake finished his first year of preschool and has started his second
-Drake has learned to swim
-Drake celebrated his 4th birthday
-We left our jobs, sold our home and said good-bye to many terrific friends in Mattoon
-We bought a new home, started new jobs and have been introduced to many terrific friends in Springfield
-My dad got to go to heaven

What a difference a year makes!

Swim lesson success

Drake has been doing really well at swim lessons. He is doing a great job using big reaching arms and kicking all by himself! Here is a short glimpse at his success:

By next summer, I'm pretty sure he'll be training for the 2012 Olympics. Okay, maybe at least able to play in the local pool without floaties! I'll take that. Although, he does have grand plans to now teach Grammy how to swim. Get your goggles ready, Grammy!