Bama Birthday Bash!

My main man, PB, had a birthday last week! 

He turned 39!  It's his last year of being 30-something.  Wow!  I can remember when he turned 20 and now he's only a year away from 40.  We've officially been together half of our lives!  Time has flown by.  He really prefers not to celebrate birthdays.  Not just his either.  He'd be perfectly happy to just say "Happy Birthday ____!" and go on about the day.  But I love to celebrate birthdays so he had not one but TWO birthday celebrations!  Isn't he special?  I think so! 

The first celebration was at my aunt and uncle's lake house. My cousin's husband, Clint, was turning 30 four days before PB turned 39 so my uncle suggested a party for both of them. PB and Clint are big University of Alabama football fans so that is where the theme of the party came from. And since it was a gameday for Alabama vs. Michigan our party decor was all about Bama football! Nothing too fancy but just right for two guys who'd probably rather not even have a party. My aunt made the birthday signs with her cricut. That thing is awesome! I might like to have one of those things some day. The other decorations were some things that I have from our tailgating supplies.

                                                         The birthday boys!

The Bama cake came from Publix and was too cute.  I made the little signs showing their ages though out of scrapbook paper just to make it more personal for them.  We ate barbecue, baked beans, potato salad and broccoli salad.  It was all delicious and PB was a good sport about it all.

Our 2nd birthday celebration was at PB's parents house.  It was also planned around a gameday event.  PB's parents are HUGE Bama fans.  They usually go to all the games but decided not to go to this one and hosted a birthday party for their only son.  They set up their backyard like the Quad on campus at the University of Alabama.  They put up their Bama tailgating tent and moved their motor home into the backyard.  The chairs were set up around the tv that slides out from under the motor home and we watched the Bama v. Arkansas game just like we would if we were in Tuscaloosa watching college football.  I was bad and didn't get any pictures of their set up.  It was very cute!  I only took a couple of pictures of PB's cake.  He's on a diet and requested an angel lush birthday cake.  Here's my cake creation in honor of my sweet hubby, PB!

I made a banner out of some scrapbook paper I had and attached it to two wooden skewers with red and white baker's twine.  It turned out pretty cute, if I do say so myself!  PB was even impressed that I went to all that trouble for his birthday. 

                             Silly pose of all the girl cousins on PB's side of the family.

PB was glad to get a new Bama visor and a new decal for his truck.  Maybe he's decided that birthday celebrations aren't so bad after all???  I'm already thinking of ways to celebrate the big 4-0 that he'll be having next year.  What do you do to celebrate your sweetie's birthday? 

Loads of fun: A Before and After Story

I'm a mom.  And a wife.  And a laundry expert.  Sort of.  I nicknamed myself the Laundry Queen because some days that's all I feel like I do.  And is it just my household that likes to fill up laundry baskets just as I am admiring how nice they look when they are all empty?  PB sometimes apologizes to me when he's the first one to throw in some dirty laundry.  He knows I love an empty laundry basket.  Since I feel like I am constantly doing laundry I wanted a pretty space to be in while doing my daily chore.  The laundry room in this home is also what I call my office.  I also call it my mudroom.  It's really a catch-all room.  When we bought this house last July I fell in love with the idea of how much space I was going to have to do all my laundry in.  However, it was as ugly-as-all-get-out!  You know how ugly that is!  Take a look at the before pictures of my favorite space:

What?  You don't like 1960's wood paneling?  Hmmm.  Me either!  I had to look past all the brown and cobwebs that covered this room and think of all the fun I would have in here while cleaning my beloved husband and children's clothing.  This is the first room you walk into from our carport.  It's pretty much the only door that people use when coming to visit us.  It has to look good.  So I began to redecorate this room the week after we moved in and boy what a different looking room it became.   We decided to remove a crazy room-dividing kitchen cabinet and put in this space.  It could use some extra storage.  PB orchestrated the cabinet switch-a-roo and got my parents and our teenage neighbor to come over to help out.

                                                                      Crazy room-dividing kitchen cabinet

                                                                    PB removing the crazy kitchen cabinet!

                                                                                     In it's new home!
 
I was doing back flips after I saw this thing hanging up in my freshly painted laundry room.  It looks right at home in here.  I knew immediately we made a good decision in putting more storage in here.  Plus, it hadn't cost us a dime!  Yeah!  So I broke out some more paint and started painting the cabinets.  Guess what color???? 

Black!  I love, love, love how they turned out!  I couldn't be happier with my new Laundry Room/Office/Mudroom!  I think it may be my favorite room-makeover of all time!  Also, I made a little area for the children to place their backpacks and lunch boxes in here.  It's very to similar to what we had in our last house but has a different feel to it in this house.  This is what makes up the mudroom part of the room.  I love how organized it makes me feel!
 

It's a great place to have so that the floor can stay clear of all their stuff that they come home with every day during the school year.  The two pictures above the hooks are the kids self portraits that they did in pre-school when they were 4 years old.  So special to me! 

I'd still like to get a rug to go in this space and I'm thinking about covering up the water heater with something to make it less of an eyesore.  I thinking about a curtain or some sort of a room-dividing screen could do the job in concealing it so it's not quite as noticeable.   We'll see what I come up with.  But as for today, I'm just having loads of fun doing my family's laundry!