Day 108: Fun With Pinwheels

We went to the Dollar Store today to pick up a few things for our movie night tomorrow. Ashlyn found these pinwheels and really wanted them (they came in a pack of 3). I figured every kid needs a pinwheel at some point, so I let her add it to the basket. :) She loves it and I just thought the fun colors of the pinwheel would lend well in making it a black and white picture with just the pinwheel in color. I'm loving it!! And, with that, I'm all caught up again. :)

Day 107: Cuban Memories

Shortly before moving from Cuba, we went to a craft fair. They always held one for residents to sell their crafty goods (except for food... they wouldn't allow it :( so no cake pops, but that's neither here nor there) every few months. Anyway, there is always one photographer or another selling their pictures and we found these two gems and had to grab them up. This first one is in our living room and has a picture of 5 of the animals that roam around the place (woodpecker, iguana, owl, hummingbird, banana rats) and a picture of the lighthouse.


This next one we got for Ashlyn's room. It's a horrible picture of the pictures, but the colors are beautiful. All different pictures of hummingbirds with "lights" added into the flowers to make it look fairy tale-like. I love it. It's not up in her room yet, but soon. Actually, now that I think about it, this is kinda the color scheme I want Ashlyn's room to be (since green is her favorite color but she still is a girly girl, hence the pink). Again, the colors just don't come out in this photo, but it's really nice.

Day 106: Raspberries With A Surprise

Every week during grocery shopping, I let Ashlyn pick a new fruit (or an old favorite, but we try to do something new most of the time) to try. This time was raspberries and she loved them! One day I decided to give her a little treat and put in some butterscotch chips inside. I saw the idea on Pinterest and they used white chocolate chips, but we only had butterscotch at the time. She loved them so much!

Day 105: Day To Day

Aaron's dad had picked up a Disney calendar from a bank or something and brought it for Ashlyn awhile back because he knows how much she loves Mickey. I put it over her bed and every morning we mark off the day, talk about what day it is, and sing a song about the days of the week. She's pretty good at knowing what day comes next (our morning every day: Me: If yesterday was Friday, today is.... Ashlyn: Saturday!). Not perfect, but there has been a big difference between the beginning of the year and now. This is the picture for the 25th, so ignore the date on the calendar. We hadn't marked the day off yet. lol

Day 104: A Screened-In Porch With A View

I've taken a picture of the lake we can see from our back yard, but never from our back yard. So here is a pic I took in the direction of the lake from just inside our back door. Directly in front of us is the laundry room and to the left is the pool gate, but it is very nicely landscaped and you can't see inside the laundry room too much so it's nice. Lots of people walk their dogs past our window so it's cool to look at all the cute fluffiness. :)

Day 103: Coffee, Coffee, Coffee!!!!

I love me some Starbucks. Like, seriously. I hate coffee, but their caramel fraps (and some other things that either don't have coffee or you can't really taste the coffee) are soooo good. Anyway, Aaron got off work pretty early this day and took us to the zoo since the weather was so nice. Afterward we stopped by Riverside to grab some lunch at a pretty park. Before heading home, we walked over to the Starbucks. All the store signs had scroll work that I just love.

Day 102: Pretty Girl

Ashlyn wanted a braid this day instead of just a ponytail and requested I take a picture of her. :)

Day 101: Pretty Precious Plants

Okay, I'm ready to sit down and fully catch up on the pictures. :) We got these plants and put them in pots very shortly after moving into our apartment. My mom would be so proud of me. She always said she had black thumbs and could never keep plants alive. These take very little care, though, and we made sure to get plants that need little sunlight since they are in our screened in porch. They always make me smile.

Day 100: Baking!

Aaron's grandparents sent me this cookbook for my birthday. I can't wait to try something out of it! I'm thinking I'm going to try one of the cookies in it next week. :)

Day 99: Beach Cottage

While in St. Augustine a few weeks ago, we saw this sign in one of the little shops and I just loved it because our guest bathroom is kind of a beach theme. We're still working on it little by little, but we're trying not to be TOO literal. So far we have this sign, a shell that was painted by someone in Cuba that has Ashlyn's name and stuff on it that we got for her 1st birthday, and a picture of an anchor made of Cuban sea glass made by a friend of ours. Everything else is going to be the color scheme of light blue, beige, and coral. We did add a shelf that is a bit wavy to represent the ocean, too. I'm liking it so far. :) I'll take pics of more when it gets closer to completion. We're not in a hurry. We get stuff whenever we find something we think would be perfect. Actually, this picture kinda stinks. The colors and everything are much cuter in person. :)

Day 98: Tiaras

Ashlyn liked having her hats on the wall so much, I put up her tiaras, too, just across from the hats.

Day 97: Book Maze

Ashlyn just loves to make book towers. She will "read" a book, put it down, read another, then stack it on top of the first one. She can make pretty impressive little towers but this day she decided to make something different. She stood them up and said she was making a book maze. :)

Day 96: Hats

In Ashlyn's closet (which I still haven't put the finishing touches on... I need to get on it) she has a dress-up area. I decided to put push pins on the wall to hold her different hats/headbands. There are a couple missing on the bottom there because I just couldn't find them quick enough, but it works out really well and she can see what all she has and what she wants to dress up as.

Day 95: Tale As Old As Time

Aaron and Ashlyn were coloring a Belle cutout before we went to go see Beauty and the Beast in theaters.

Day 94: Lumiere

Ashlyn helped me make Lumiere for our Beauty and the Beast movie night. We made it the night before because the paint had to dry and everything had to be put together. It was a pain, but she had a blast painting it.

Day 93: Snuggle Up!

Ashlyn was resting and Ali (who loves to cuddle and really loves this white blanket) decided to hang out with her for awhile.

Day 92: Bloop Bloop

Today Ashlyn had her zoology class. They learned about fish this week and then made their own! She said his name is Bloop Bloop the fish. :)

Day 91: More Decorations

Every season/holiday, we've been getting window clings. Ashlyn has so much fun putting them up and since you can get a big sheet at, again, the Dollar Store, there's no reason to not let her pick out her favorite and go for it on our back door. :)

Day 90: Let A Little Love In Your Heart

I saw a post somewhere that talked about how they used a little white bird in their Valentine's decorations this year and they got it from Target in their Valentine's section. I loved it and it was inexpensive, so I knew I wanted to run to Target and get one. I went to get the white one, but there was only one pink one left and Ashlyn loved it, so I got both. :) Then I got two vases or whatever you want to call them and a few packs of conversation hearts (vases and hearts from the Dollar Store) to complete our table decor. :) I was just going to use the white bird and put the pink one elsewhere (Ashlyn's room, maybe?), but I couldn't part the lovebirds. ;) I think they will stay out after Valentine's, too. I'm not sure where, but they're cute and don't need to be just for Valentine's Day.

Day 89: Rock On!

Because Ashlyn loves music so much, I set up a little music station in our living room with our Wii instruments, her new guitar, her microphone, and our radio/CD player.

Day 88: Play It Loud, Just LIke A Rockstar!

I was looking online at some stuff and on the Nick Jr. website there was a template and instructions on how to make a guitar just like KiKi in The Fresh Beat Band. Ashlyn's always wanting to play with our Wii guitar, but we won't let her (she can only play with the drums). So I knew I had some paper towel tubes and cardboard in my craft box so I whipped it up for her. She has played it every day!

Day 87: New Kind of Bow

I found a tutorial online for some new types of bows and this one seemed very simple so I tried it out with some bow I had already. I think it's kinda cute! So I will be making a few just to play around. I'm wanting to make a Cheshire Cat bow, but I want to look for a particular ribbon first. Anyway, here's the new bow.

Day 86: Blue Moon

I didn't have a decent picture today, but Ashlyn LOVES the moon. She loves anything having to do with the sky like rainbows, airplanes, clouds, etc. but the moon especially catches her interest. She really wanted to take a picture of the moon today so she "helped" me take a couple of pictures. I could not find a way to take a really good picture, though. At least not right then and there. I'll have to experiment.

Day 85: A Whole New World

Thursday night we had our Aladdin movie night. Dessert was Abu's monkey bread. This is a quick Pillsbury recipe but Aaron can't stop eating it. :) It's really good. (Everything will be posted on my Disney blog Saturday morning.)

Day 84: I See Trees of Green...

I love all the trees around our neighborhood and I love the look of these trees that are on one side of our complex, even though the picture really doesn't do it justice at all. It is gorgeous as the sun is setting (I need to try and get a decent picture of that).

Day 83: Cake, Cake, and More Cake

That's how I feel every time I have an order to do. :) Anyway, Aaron's boss wanted a few treats for the meeting he was having today with some of the owners. So I made some sparkles, hamburgers, and a few cupcakes. I don't know if you can see the hamburgers very well in the pic, but they actually turned out pretty cute.

Day 82: I Have A Wonderful Husband

So the Christmas decorations have been down for a couple of days and Ashlyn was still missing the Christmas tree and everything. Aaron had to run out to return our movie the day before I took this picture and came back with flowers, saying that he knows it's hard to go from Christmas decorations to nothing, so he wanted to get something nice. Plus, he always gets me yellow flowers around my mom's birthday (Jan. 3rd) because she loved yellow flowers. :)

Day 81: Stocking Up

I had a last minute cake pop order and needed to get some candy melts. Luckily, Joann was having a sale for candy melts, 50% off! So they were $1.50 each so I grabbed some I might need in the near future, too. Yay! It was my first time using peanut butter melts, too. I made sure to make those pops with chocolate cake. :)

Day 80: 3, 2, 1...

I almost forgot to take a picture on New Year's Eve, so I took a picture of the cake we had for dessert. We had a very low-key night. I honestly couldn't tell you what we watched (we rented a movie but ended up watching it the next day... Friends With Benefits... it's an awesome movie. I'll be buying it soon or asking for it for my birthday). Oh, actually I remember flipping back and forth between the Lady Gaga concert on HBO, Encore, or whatever channel it was on, Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve, and some other random things. Aaron and I mainly just hung out together and had fun. :) Ashlyn went to bed at her normal time, but I'm thinking next year maybe we'll try to let her stay up. We'll see. :)

Day 79: Our First Kale Chip Attempt

So for awhile now I've seen lots of blog posts about kale chips and how yummy they are. I've been meaning to try it out, but just hadn't. Our grocery store had them on sale recently so I grabbed a bag to try it out. It didn't turn out perfectly (I overcooked them just a tad) but they had so much promise, we are going to try again soon.