Possible Answer to Prayers?

OK I had to blog this. Did you know you can take pictures and actually look thinner? Now any of you who know me, I positively hate having my picture taken. I look and them and think , OH Crap when did I turn into a blimp?? Now don't get me wrong , I know when and how (it was the cheese cake, ice cream, pasta, ok anything I put in my mouth that I know I shouldn't). I am not in denial I know how I got this way and I know how to change it.

That being said you rarely see pictures of me but the short term answer to my prayers has finally come!! They now make camera's with a slimming feature!! I am not kidding I couldn't make this up. HP has many camera's with this. You have to check it out.

But with technology comes down sides. I would know that just because a person looked thinner in the picture , they would still not be thin. But most importantly, what would this do to the online dating community?? You hear horror stories of people who "fall in love" online only to meet in person and the other be a much much larger version of who they described themselves as or even sending someone else's picture. But what if you were sent a picture where the person made them selves slimmer with the camera tools. It is a picture of them........ sort of.

What do you all think of this??

Updates

Last week we had our good friends from NC come to visit for 5 days. It was so nice to see them again and the kids got along just like they used to. (haha hugs, and fighting it was just like last year when we all had to part ways)

We got to go to 6 flags St. Louis with them which was a real treat because as we realized we actually never did anything fun and big like that with all the kids. Our last attempt ended in a mugging and riding cement horses at the police station. It absolutely was a wonderful day. The kids were well behaved, the weather perfect, and the lines not long. I hand picked it just for Alexis just like she ordered the dolphins when I came to her house and we went to the beach one day.

It was sad to see them leave but it made me realize that no matter how much time goes by between our visits, she will always be like my sister I never had and it will be like we just left each other yesterday and we pick up right where we left off. Hannah and Sam will always be the best of girlfriend and I see lots of long distance phone calls between them too in a few years.

As for my house and all the work I have been doing, well I got most of it done. I know that I need to post pictures so those will be up in the next day I promise. And to sweeten the deal I will post before and after so you can really see the difference. I think the kitchen will wait a few more weeks before I get to work on that. I am still having aches and pains from all the work I did in the living-room. I think rolling the paint and doing the texture I developed Carpel Tunnel Syndrome haha is that even possible? I guess though for me anything is possible right?

This Friday the girls and I are packing up and heading East. We will first go to Charlotte to visit my mom for the weekend. Then pop north-west to see Alexis in Funky Vagina (oops that's not really its name but had to say it cause I can!!) for a few days and then from there go North a bit more and go see Brigitte in her new digs. She ( the lucky ducky) is building a new house which won't be done for a couple months yet so the daring woman will be living in an apartment for the time between. So adding us the the group of 6 will be very interesting to say the least. Brig, I will bring the wine!!

So that's all the new stuff.

One room down

So... busy, busy, busy is the name of the game. I haven't gotten dressed in days but the living room is nearing the end!! I am learning patience with all this work but that's good right? Last night I wanted to sleep on the couch so I could keep looking at my fab walls going ,I think I like this.

On the heels of all my work, I am taking today off and Ashley and I are going to take a free day and go to Six Flags just the two of us and blow off some steam. (thru work, they are taking a bus and since we have the season passes it only cost us $2 per person for bus fare (haha) and then the cost of what ever we spend while there so fits in the budget nicely.) Then Wednesday its back to work. So much to do and my time off is dwindling down. I have no idea where my summer has gone.

But with our good friends from NC coming to visit next week, I can't wait for them to see the difference I have made in house. I am very excited to share!!

If you wondered what I have been doing lately

This shows just a tiny tasting of my recent days. The first picture shows the two inches of plaster/type substance that came off my hall walls by just washing before priming.

The second picture is something I removed from my garbage disposal after turning it on and then after it ran for 10 seconds started making a grinding horrible noise. I am going out on a limb and guessing that this is part of the chopping thing that should go around and chop all the gunk you put in a disposal?

And my final picture is the difference between my freshly painted living room ceiling and my unpainted kitchen ceiling.

Now of course I don't have pictures to showcase all the other issues that comes along with doing any kind of sprucing up in my wonderful fabulous home.

There was the issue of fixing all the cracks in the walls. Painting the hall way and the next morning starting to apply the top color to do the combing technique I was going to do to only have the bottom paint start peeling off. So of course I only had one choice. I spend all day yesterday re-texturing the entire living room. Yes it was fun. In fact it was the most fun I have ever had in my entire life. ........ can you feel the sarcasm?

In case you were wondering how to duplicate this in your own home, let me tell you!! First you start with a 4.5 gallon bucket of tuna smelling goo. I think it must weigh about 75 lbs. Then you add 2 liters of water. Apparently this is an important step. Then you can add a little more water. You want it to have the consistency of melted ice cream per directions on the back of giant bucket. NOW the tricky part is figuring out how to stir the water in to the giant goo bucket.... I found disassembling my swiffer and using long handle to work for me but I am sure others have come up with some other useful tools.

OK so your goo is stirred up and your swiffer stick is bent and your arm is hanging limp at your side because you stirred it to death. (it is now 80 lbs of goo keep in mind and you had to stab it quite a bit to *stir*)

The next step is take a 4 inch paint brush and apply goo to wall. NOW HERE is another important step it says apply thickly to about 1/16 to 1/8 inch thick. !!!!!!!( don't make the mistake I made. Apparently you really should drag out a ruler and measure your thickness IF you do as I do and go.....hmm its holding the brush horizontal to the wall so yep looks thick to me is bad. ) Now after you smashed on your 1/16- to 1/8 inch goo you take a roller with wonderful pattern of your choice and play in goo.

From time to time you have to rub goo off roller or was. Too much gunked up goo is bad. You also have to do opposite walls which means you have to drag your drop cloths, ladders, rags, and children ( I did mention that for the best possible results you must involve your young wonderful children who never argue, fight, shove each other in the goo into helping you right?? If I didn't that to is an important step to the proper goo application. ) OK so you have now applied 150 lbs of goo to your walls and it only took you 7 hours to do 3 walls. Good job time to take a pee break.

Now while you take your break you notice that your wonderful goo job (I used a roller to install cracks into my walls) is cracking. ** Now, I don't mean that my goo successfully has roller installed cracks, no that would be nice wouldn't it. OOOOH no not for us goo installers. Nope for us that means that our goo was applied to thick (refer to upper reference to 1/16 inch to 1/8 inch thickness) so our installed cracks has cracks. Talk about crack house from hell. But for those of us who don't feel the need to measure our goo, good news there is a way to fix this problem. The next morning when you roll out of bed and every muscle is on fire and you ache in places that you didn't know you had, you get more goo and add lots of water. Make it thin like paint....... I chose to go for the cheap thin brand of paint thickness (haha) and not the Lowe's variety of thickness.

Then you paint this thin paint like goo over the dried up crack goo. And ta-da you have kick ass crack textured walls!!!! Congratulations, good job I am so proud of you goo installers!!! You get a huge pat on the back and OK now you have to go trim out the hall because you left that project unfinished.

Ok sorry that was soo long and thanks if you got thru it. I just wanted to make sure if anyone ever needed to add goo to walls they knew how to do it. Think of it as your female friendly goo guide. or FFGG

Vacation Pictures

I have been a very bad blogger. Since we have been home from vacation I have been destroying my house. Yes another endless project is in the works. This means hours upon hours of decorating decisions that can't be made.

But to redeem myself I thought I would post some pictures from our vacation.

The Knights at Medeival Times

The girls outside of the castle

Mardi Gras Royalty in Six Flags

Hannah flying the wiggles jet

The girls waiting for the old fashioned cars

Mark and Ashley in the car

Tweety in the night time parade

Ashley and Hannah with the Jelly Belly Car

Hannah with her free bag of Jelly Belly's

Happy 4th Everyone!!

I just wanted to pop my head in for a moment and wish everyone a Happy 4th of July!!