Easter and the New Living Room Color!

This weekend we were up in Oklahoma visiting Kyle's family for the long Easter weekend. It's been a long time since I've had off for Good Friday so we trotted off to Norman for some good ole Easter family fun. And I'm excited to say that a little crafty fun this weekend inspired me to finally choose our living room color!

There are a few more kiddos up in Oklahoma with Kyle's family than down in Louisiana with my family. Let's just say me and my brothers and sisters and cousins are 'the grand kids' and on one side there are no 'great-grand kids' and on the other side none of the 'great-grand kids' live in the state of Louisiana. While we have our fair share of fun, it usually doesn't include dyeing Easter eggs or hunting Easter eggs anymore. Although after our weekend in Oklahoma, I think I'm going to recommend we start doing both again in Louisiana... kids or no kids...

Anyway, we had lots of good times in Oklahoma and I'll share all of the pictures later, but I wanted to tell you about the egg dyeing. It was 'for the kids' but the adults were allowed to participate too.

I whipped out the ole rubber cement and made a little tiger-striped egg. It's real easy, just 'fling' the rubber cement drips across the egg on all sides, let dry, dip the eggs in dye. Let dry, remove rubber cement: presto, tiger stripes. Maybe I'll do a little tutorial later. It may not be the most kid friendly because of the fumes, but I don't have kids so I didn't think of that... until my nephew tried to sniff the jar. Oops.

I whipped out the 'magic crayon' method too. My mother-in-law had a clear crayon we used that came with the egg dyeing kit, but growing up we just used a white crayon. I was sneaky and wrote my youngest nephew's name on the egg without him seeing and handed it to him to dye. A few minutes later he pulled out a green egg with his name 'magically' written on it. I made a similar egg that said "I Love Kyle" and handed it to my husband, but he wasn't as fooled. How did he ever figure me out?? :)

I was pretty impressed with the colors of the eggs, the selection of colors and the ability to really create any design using moth the rubber cement and crayon techniques.... and it got me thinking about the living room...

See the paint on our walls really is in great shape; they painted the house right before we moved in. The problem is simply the color: it's a 'dirty' off-white. But then I thought about how the eggs were off-white when we started with them too right?

I could pick the perfect color and beautiful blend if I 'water colored' or 'dyed' the walls! I could stencil a design in rubber cement and the pattern would be left white after the dye. Or I could dye the wall first, then apply the rubber cement, and then apply the second color and get a two-tone design. Maybe that green or even the blue. With such a large living room we could even do multiple colors on the different walls.

Paint color problem solved! Imagine it!

Or maybe it's just an April Fools joke. :)

No one in their right mind would stencil an entire living room in rubber cement, right? The fumes! But I will tell you those pretty egg colors may just pop up when we accessorize the room.

But not the wall, no, not the wall.

Hope you had a good Easter, we really did have a great weekend (that wasn't part of the joke) and we really did dye eggs. More to share about Easter weekend and the reveal of the real wall color coming soon. No kidding ;)

Happy April First.

Thanksgiving Rewind

We spent our Thanksgiving (and Black Friday) in Oklahoma this year with Kyle's family. Tons of family, tons of food, and really, leftovers for days. It was very yummy. I didn't quite get a picture of all the food, but I made sure to take a picture of my addition to the feast: Jeweled Fruit. We have it with my family at every holiday, it's kind of amazing. And it's a great way to sneak dessert into the main meal... Great way to bring a little of my family to Oklahoma, too.

But after the feasting we discovered an enormous pile of leaves in the neighbor's yard. The kiddos out there had been raking all day. Then they were running and jumping in it. The picture doesn't do it justice. It was huge.

So we decided we'd take the Hess Family picture right in front of the huge leave pile. But there were so many Hesses (or Keys or Malthaners) that the pile of leaves got a little hidden. Also, I apologize for the insane amount of hair and hair poof I have in this picture... I fixed it on the run and the neighbor girl said it looked great. #timeforahaircut

Then we tried to get the Key kiddos in a pic. I hate to post "bad" pictures of any kid, but the progression here is hilarious, if you know these kiddos it makes it even better.

Then just a few more leave pictures. Because playing in a massive leave pile is just what you do on Thanksgiving. At least I remember doing that in Little Rock a few times. This one I think is my favorite.

Or maybe this one...

Or maybe this one. Too many favorites.

So then we went on a family bike ride. I was impressed by the number of bikes available for adults to ride. I was also impressed by the fact that we got to ride to the Seven Eleven to get Icees or at least Seven Eleven brand Icees. I worked off my turkey and replaced it with Icee. Totally worth it.

The leaf monster road bikes too. But we ended Thanksgiving with the Black Friday shopping, the Nebraska game and the LSU game on Friday, pedicures with the ladies and the OU game on Saturday, and Pizza Shuttle, don't forget the Pizza Shuttle. Headed back to good ole Texas in time for the work week.

Good times in Oklahoma for Thanksgiving. And now Christmas begins...

And a shout out to Caralie, birthday girl. Who I had a crazy weird dream about last night that involved shopping malls. Happy 26th Birthday to You... we're getting old.

Lost Camera, Found Gingerbread Men

So today I was really excited about blogging about our fantastic Yard Sale last weekend... but we may have lost our digital camera along with the Big 12 Championship last weekend :(

...I was also excited about blogging about the work party madness we had this week... but I forgot to bring my camera to Shreveport (probably because it was lost in Cowboy Stadium)

...I was also excited to blog about how cute, cozy and wonderful our Ladies Bible Study Christmas party was... but again, no camera.

I'll have to charge mine up instead of toting Kyle's everywhere. But I've emailed the Lost and Found Department with way too many details about our camera in hopes that somehow they have it. The fact is I'm not totally sure it's lost.  See I cannot find it anywhere! but that happened about a month ago with my keys for over an hour of frantic looking and then Kyle found them on the key hook...

So it's catch up time!

This fall has been filled with wonderful moment that are still stuck in my computer, so here are just a few of them:

So at Thanksgiving I got real excited about
Legos... I'm not sure anyone present knew
about my Lego Skills. Mom, I knew you and
Justin would be proud!

These two little guys (AKA nephews Mr. A and Landen) would be the reason I was playing Legos in the first place.  It's real hard to say that I don't have time for Legos when first of all I love Legos, second of all I'm on vacation so really I have time for anything, and third "how do you say no to these faces?"

This would be my wonderful husband
pretending to be sooooper sleepy
after all his hard work decorating the tree.
Don't ya just love this one?

 This would be the Gingerbread and Snickerdoodle Christmas Extravaganza Part I. Get excited to see Part II... and maybe even Part III. Yep I'll definitely have to find the camera...

Bet you wish your house smelled like gingerbread... but there are so many ingredients... but no longer! Betty Crocker makes a Ginger Bread cookie mix in a bag (not to be confused with Betty Crocker Gingerbread Cake and Cookie Mix). You just add butter, egg, and 1 tablespoon of water. And at our Walmart it's on sale for $1.58 a bag! I bought some, then when I went back for more the lady had to go in the back and dig and all she found was 3 bags... I bought them all. I know I sound like a salesperson, but they'll go fast and they don't come back again until next year :)

Bake some gingerbread today!

Thanksgiving Marshmallows and Black Friday

Happy Thanksgiving! 

I know I'm a day late, well two days late.  But we've been busy up here in Oklahoma.  We've been fooding for Thanksgiving, shopping for Black Friday, footballing for all the big games, and of course leftovers, rubber band wars, and marshmallow gun fights! 

You really wouldn't believe the things you can fit into two days, especially when you stay up all night shopping. So for anyone who doesn't participate in the day after Thanksgiving shopping, here's how it goes down with the Hess family:

1. Grab the ads. Get the kiddos to choose what they want for Christmas from what's on sale! Perfect!

2. Make your own Christmas list, some sale items, some not. And make copies for everyone in the room.

3. Make your gameplan! What time do all the stores open, what's the best deals, who do you have to buy for, what do they want that's on sale. Cross compare the ads, to the lists, to the plan. Figure out who's going to what store and who can grab something for you (even if it's what you'll be giving them for Christmas).

Example Plan from Kyle and Brittany:

11:30pm  - Be at Walmart, find the deals you want to grab and make sure to be at the front of the line.

MIDNIGHT - Time to grab and go mad, and run to the number 2, 3, 4 priority item on the list.

12:30 - Dash to the front register as everyone else grabs the last items and meets you in line!

1:00 - Head to Old Navy for jeans for $15 a pair!

1:15 - Leave Old Navy realizing that the line literally goes up and down every aisle and is 3-4 hours long!

1:45 - Head to Walgreens for wrapping paper at 1.99 a roll plus 1 free rolls! Then realize that has been the sale for like 5 days, oh well.

2:15 - Go by Norman's second Walmart looking for a particular toy for a particular nephew that sold out in like 10 seconds at the other Walmart. Go up and down every aisle looking for that toy someone may have set down and decided not to buy...

...keep looking...

...keep looking and find Toy Story 3 for $10!

...keep looking and find the toy in pink and purple :(

...keep looking...

3:00  - YES! Found the toy in boy colors on the floor on the greeting card aisle! Wooo!

3:15 - Head back to home base to check out the online Old Navy sale for jeans and realize I am not a size 0 or size 16 so no jeans for me.

3:30 - Pack up and head to Target! Lady in the parking lot tells us the line starts in the back of the store... the line goes from the South entrance, past the North entrance, past the Motherhood Maternity store, past the Verizon store, past the AT&T store, around the dumpsters and back around to the AT&T store. WOW!

Picture taken by Emily Hess real early in the Morning!

4:15 - Run into Target, get everything we were looking for and race to the checkout to get a great spot in line and out in like 15-20 minutes!

5:00 - Head back to Old Navy just in case... and they have even more jeans available, the line is short, and we score jeans half off! Woo!

5:30 - See a line outside in the mall and wonder what people are waiting for. Hop in the line. Get a free gift bag with a "sport ball" in it. But the lady in front of us got a $50 mall certificate! Good for her, she was very cute!

4. Rest

6:15 - Make it back to home base, SNOOZE!

Can you say, wonderful, adrenaline, and whoa tiring! But we're officially done with all the gifts for Kyle's family. We'll wrap them today and leave them here!  So I encourage everyone to get out and do that next year, really because at least at 2am there's some fun involved as opposed to 2 weeks later when the stores are just as packed, you don't get any sales, and you don't seem to think it's quite as exciting.  And now we can focus on decorating! right? (and buying for the Kingsley fam of course).

More to come soon on our fabulous fall! My trip home to Lake Charles with the fam, our trip to College Station... and SOON to come decorating the house for Christmas!! (once we do that :)

What did you do this Thanksgiving? and what are you thankful for?