they say

you know those people that say stuff? didn't they something about how the invitation sets the mood for the party? well then. don't you want to come to ours?

I'd told Lily we could make them together but then we ran out of time so I made them one day while she was at school. When I picked her up I showed her and she looked ticked. A little unimpressed. She said, "mom, they're not good..." only then she threw her arms up and grinned and yelled "....they're GREAT!"

blog books

I think there are 82 different ways to do these and all of them are bomb. here's allie style:

*I use banners I've made during that year for my cover. easy peasey.

*I sometimes forget to type in what I want on the spine so I use a sharpie. and it still bugs me. Shutterfly goes up to 100 pages per book so if I can't fit it in I do 2 volumes.

*I design the whole page in photoshop. all the picture arranging and titles and writing and everything. it's much faster for me that way and I can just put something where I want it instead of looking for a template to match.

*for each year I pick new fonts. fun ones for titles and readable ones for the words.

*using keyboard shortcuts for cutting and pasting and resizing and moving and everything speeds this process up quite a bit. and bonus I feel like one of those cool people on movies that types frantically for a minute to stop the train from exploding or the door on the hatch closing on someone.

*I stuck with white backgrounds. it doesn't get old and it looks like my blog.

*when there was lots of text I found myself dividing it up into columns or trying to keep it near the picture it goes with

*once in a while I knock your socks off with a cute little mug like this one. my books are 12 inch square so that's a lot of Lily.

*when I loved the comments or they made me laugh I included them. most of the time I did a screen capture (you know the PrntScrn button) and pasted it into photoshop. I cleaned it up a little like cropped it down to what I actually wanted and then included it on the page.

*once in a while I'd leave a super dumb post out all together

*if I included links I usually added in the actual url in parentheses (http://www.awesome.com) that's not really one though

*sometimes I'd put a couple of posts on one page if they were miniscule

*back in the day I posted tons of video slideshows I made so occasionally I would show a screen capture of those too just to remind me what I'm talking about in the book

*we love looking at them! my goal this year is to blog enough to make a book....so far, lame.

my baby guy

it is his birthday only point two seven percent of the year. the whole year. so we've gotta make it special. the four of us spent the day before playing pretend in utah and then had ourselves a little party.

wait, what are those wonderful pom-poms? made of wonderful fabric from grandma ross :)

these: tied together with string

the highlight. the both the cake-maker-experimenter and the cake-eaters

penny tile bathroom floor

this tale will read a little like the time when I gave a mouse a cookie.

you know that little thing on the bottom of the toilet that covers up the bolt? you know how ours was biggish....like a 2 inch square? you know how Max flushed it one day and it clogged up everything? that was bad.

at the time we didn't know what it was so we tried all manner of ways of fixing the problem. on day 3 (I really didn't want to call a plumber if we could avoid it. he has a really long beard and wants to talk about hunting for way too long) I was frustrated with the no progress and tired of staring at the ugliness of the downstairs bathroom. the one room I'd shown no love to. not a bit. maybe a new rug. here it is when the old owners still lived here

too bad it doesn't show how the cupboards are really kind of yellow with a gold design sprayed on and the wallpaper pattern is like country blue wheat lining the walls. and cheap ugly linoleum.

so since I couldn't fix the toilet I changed out the faucet.

and painted the wallpaper (I liked the texture)

and changed out the doorknob and the towel bar and the toilet paper holder and the light fixture and the switchplates.

and took out the baseboards.

and painted the cupboards and put on new knobs.

and decided to tile the floor. this one deserves like size 74 font but I probably won't do that.

and cut new baseboards and caulk stuff.

and had to spend 3 days of my life ripping out 4 layers of old floor from like all the way back to 1918 probably. not really I don't know but it was hard.

and my legs still have some gray patches where the epoxy grout decided to stick to me.

oh yes and at the beginning of that me and my sister Caiti did get the toilet fixed. we learned all about unbolting it from the floor and discovering the little bolt cover wedged near the bottom and then all about wax rings (gross) and putting toilets back in and stuff like that. that's when we became plumbers.

so it's not like a remodel but it is like a major facelift.

it's weird to love a bathroom floor but I love my bathroom floor.

and the window is because I decorate like a kindergarten teacher and needed something happy in there.