31WKS

Hi Everyone!

Thought I would share a few pictures from my baby shower in Houston last weekend. I had such a blast, it was great to see all my family and friends that I hadn't seen in a while. I just wished I had more time to visit everyone because the time just flew by!

My MIL Karen made the CUTEST coursage for me, the flowers were made out of baby socks!

Here's the table setup at the entrance; the chocolates in the basket were made by my SIL Amy and my Aunt Teresa had one of my belly pictures framed and signed by all to put up in Evelyn's room!

These were the table centerpieces that my Grandma, Aunt Teresa and Aunt Denise worked so hard on, I LOVED them!!

My Mom threw the shower at a small banquet room in Houston, it was perfect Mom!!

Our entertainment before gift time was Matt and my Dad competing to see who could get the baby dolls dressed quickest, it was hilarious!! Great game Amy!!

Thanks again to my family for throwing such an amazing shower, it was just perfect and I will never forget it:)

XOXO

M&K

The Backyard!!

Here are some pictures of our backyard with new grass!!! Alex came up to help Matt put it in and the neighbors pitched in too! They got it all done in one day:) The rock you see below was already in the backyard but was setup in the middle of the yard. Matt and I wanted to have grass throughout so the dog could run around so we just decided to move it in closer to the house giving us more patio space. We are so happy with it; I'm tempted to decorate out there but I kind of already have a lot on my plate with the inside of the house now for;)

YAY for grass and no more crazy flower beds!!! Look at all the space Bub can run around now!! We left a little room in front of the shed to put a flower bed at some point. I'm thinking a few evergreens and a rose trellace:)

By the way...it was 106 degree's in Dallas today, here are the men taking one of their many water breaks. Poor guys!!
XOXO

M&K

How to make your own headboard

So, I think I mentioned to you guys a while back that I wanted to get rid of our guest room furniture and start over. It was just too dark in the room with the dark flooring and dark bedroom set...wasn't very "homey" feeling and not to mention we had a platform bed that wasn't exactly comfy for my parents and inlaws to get in and out of!!

So...we sold the furniture to a family on Craigslist (scored some free sod for the backyard from them too!) and I got the idea, from one of my favorite blogs, to make my own head board! It was super easy, super CHEAP, customized to exactly what I wanted and took maybe 2 and a half hours to complete. I took some pictures throughout the whole process so that if you too want to try and make your own you can get motivation from my pics...I'm not kidding it was super easy but ladies just make sure you have a man on hand because I will say the whole last part of it was done all by Matt:)

So here's the bedroom before...cute but dark

We have a queen size bed so we bought some plywood that was about 3/8'' thick and 4' x 8'; we had it cut down at Home Depot, FOR FREE, to 4' x 6'. We used the 6ft side to go across the bed which left about 2in that went out on each side of the bed. I found some super cute fabric at Hobby Lobby that was 30% off (duh) and got 2 yards of it. For the padding you can use different materials but in reading all the blogs out there I found the egg carton padding that you would put over your mattress to be the most padded and cheapest. I bought one full sized pad at Walmart for like $15. You could choose to do a king and cut in half for additional padding but the one was just enough padding in my opinion.

So, you start out by laying out your wood and use some spray adhesive to stick your egg carton bumpy side down on. You can get the adhesive anywhere; we got ours from Home Depot for another job a while back. If you use the same dimensions I did you will have just enough leftover padding on all four sides of the board to be able to fold over for a cleaner, rounded look around the sides and edges. Once you get it laid where you want and sprayed down you then lay out your fabric basically the same way you did the egg carton. *TIP* Solid colored fabric would have been way easier than the print I bought, we really had to work to keep the pattern straight. So if you want easy then pick out something solid!

Once our fabric was in place we carefully lifted it up on one side pulled the foam and fabric over VERY TIGHTLY and prepared to staple. Oh ya and this is where Matt came in very handy, there was no way I could have stapled into this wood myself! You have to use one of those heafty duty staplers for this job and you need to make sure you staple against a wall or something that you can press hard against. If you choose to use a solid colored fabric then you could easily just staple down on the floor but because we had a pattern we had to be able to look at it while we stapled to make sure it stayed straight. Here's Matt in action...PS, there is A LOT of stapling...this part probably took the longest. Make sure when you get to the corners to really tuck in the fabric; I ended up cutting away some of the excess padding and fabric just to keep it from bulking up. Once your done stapling then....your done!! I told you it was easy:)

Here's how it turned out when it was all said and done! It only took a few hours to do the whole thing! We decided to mount it on the wall with some brackets that we got from Home Depot. It doesn't look bad though just sitting behind the bed on the floor. Depends on the look you want:) You could also get even more crafty and add some cute buttons for a tufted look or some large nailheads around the edges of the headboard. But I like to "KISS"...Keep It Simple Students....haha if Dr. White could hear me now (she was a professor of mine in college; this was her favorite motto) haha I chose not to add anything...for now;)

And here it is all set up!! It still looks a little dark in the room but I'm telling you getting rid of the other furniture and doing this really brighted up the space. It feels so much more comfortable too, like Mom and Dad's or Grandma's house. Which is important to me seeing that all my family is back in Houston:) Hopefully this was easy to understand and motivates you to try it on your own!! You never know unless you try...

Love to all, M&K

WK29

I know....I know...it's been a while since I've updated you guys!! Life has been crazy busy...not to mention how hard it's been for me to just sit still for more than 10 minutes these days!! Baby Evelyn is doing great, still very active, growing by the day and me...I'm doing well (as good as a 7 month prego gal can do in +100 degree weather!!). Really though, I can't complain, I have the best husband in the world...he helps me with anything and everything I need and other than being pretty tired lately I feel good overall.

The baby room is coming along, we have the furniture picked out, have a new fan up, have the closet organized...only things I really need to finish are picking out curtains, finding a rug and a glider. So, if any of you see any cute ones out there let me know!! Pictures will come when it's all done :) Oh and I'm doing a homemade baby mobile that is coming along as well; my friend Christine is going to help me finish it up the next time she is in town from Austin. We saw the idea when we were both shopping at Anthro...just wait, it's going to be precious!!

My Mom and Dad came in town this weekend, we had such a nice relaxing time! We took off work Friday to take the Dallas Cowboy Stadium tour which was actually a lot of fun!! We did it all, got to see Jerry's personal box with this really fast elevator thats drops him to the runway between the locker room and field...saw all the suites (swankyyy)...the FIELD...and my favorite, the player and CHEERLEADING locker rooms!!! Awesome!! Thay had a great proshop too; you will see one of the goodies I scored below;) I also took my pregnancy pictures this weekend; it was great having my Mom there to help "primp" me as I sweat bullets in the 8am heat (was in the 90's or so). She was also pretty much our photographers assistant following us around with the big reflective light piece...so funny!! Can't wait to see how they turn out:) It's also restaurant week here in Dallas which is where you can try all the best restaurants in Dallas for a fraction of the price. We tried out Chamberlain's Steak and Chop House which I'm pretty sure we would all hands down say was the best food ever!!! So for you Dallas peeps out there that haven't been there yet, it's a MUST!!! I'm salivating just thinking of it;) We'll that's all for now. I do have a few house updates that I will put up today....hopefully! Baby room updates to come in the next few weeks as well, hopefully! No promises;)

Love to all,

M&K

Matt and I on the field!!

Mom and Dad on the field:)

Evelyn's 1st Cheer Uniform!! Future Dallas Cowboy Cheerleader;)