:: Prayer Pager #? ::

I've lost official count of the number of prayer pagers we have out there - and that makes me very happy because it means that we are reaching lots of people and ministering to them in a special way.  It is with a heavy heart that I ask for your prayers for The Colquitt Family.  They lost their 2 month old daughter Emie to SIDS a few short weeks ago.  Although I do not know this sweet family personally, I do personally know the dark, unbelievable days they are walking through right now and I beg you to intercede for them in the coming days, weeks, months and years.
I am thankful that God used their sweet friends (who were friends of friends from our old church) to contact us to let us know about this prayer pager need.  God has already surrounded them with the love and support of His people.  Please pray and page them at 334-705-9223.

I also ask you to continue to pray for my precious friend Elliot Williams.  I posted her prayer pager number months ago after she discovered she has ovarian cancer.  The doctor's thought they had just about gotten all of the cancer, but it has returned in addition to a embolism in her lungs.  Please pray for healing for Elliot, pray for her husband Chris and their sweet children Wyatt and Bradford, then page them at 334-705-9220.  You can hear Elliot's testimony by clicking here, scrolling down to March 29th, clicking "more" and then downloading the "Elliot Williams" audio.

Thank you for your prayers for these hurting families.

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:: Little Designer Contest ::

I am having a very proud Mommy moment.  Parrish was selected as one of two runners up in Bundle NYC's "Little Fashion Designer Contest!"  Bundle is a great baby and children's store we shopped in the last time we were in New York, so I get their store email updates and read about this contest.  Parrish LOVES to draw and is very creative, so I told him about the contest and he whipped out this awesome alien drawing for me to submit.  Read Bundle's blog post about Parrish's design here.  The judge's favorite was the repeat design...I love them both.  Tomorrow I'll let Parrish decide which pattern he'd like to have printed on his free t-shirt.  Which is your favorite?

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:: Nursery & Master Re-Design, Part 1 ::

We're so excited about our new baby boy!  Plans for his nursery are in full-swing.  I finally decided I was tired of obsessing over whether this fabric and paint combo was "it" and just pulled the trigger this week.  Not pictured are the wall and breadboard colors, but they'll be BM Silent Night (on the walls) and BM Rock Gray on the trim band we're doing around the tops of the doors and window frames and also on the antique Olivia Charles bead board we're installing above them on the wall.  The ceiling will be BM Oregano (pictured).  One of our OCA piece of furniture has black, green, white and brown and I think it's going to work as the changing table so I can pull some black into this design too.  Maybe for the floor rug - a black and white chevron or something along those lines.

The leaf fabric will be a crib skirt (got the great idea for only making it 3-sided since it will be up aganist a wall and for making it with tie tabs so I can adjust it to floor level as we adjust the crib mattress on Erika's amazing blog, Urban Grace.  My sister-in-law's glider (which is thankfully much smaller than ours) will be partially (bc that's all my budget can handle) covered in the green and gray velvet stripe (my favorite fabric).  The geometric will be a changing pad cover a small round pouf.

I'm getting pretty excited about it all coming together and me finally getting the ball rolling on everything.  I'll post more pictures as the room comes together.

 And because why take on one project when you can take on two?  We're also re-designing our master bedroom.  Well, I shouldn't call it a re-design because really it was never "designed" in the first place.  It is just a hodgepodge of hand-me-down furniture (some of which we still love and will keep for both sentimental and aesthetic reasons). Why is it we always seem to design every other space in our homes before the master bedroom?  I know I'm not the only one.  It's the place we go to quietly retreat and reconnect - why shouldn't it be a place filled with fabrics, personal momentos and paint colors that make us smile?


The medallion fabric will be euros and a throw backed in the small blue cheetah print.  The yellow octagon velvet will be a DIY headboard.  The yellow streaming dots will be large bolsters, and the solid linen will be a bedskirt with the blue greek key trim.

So after 9 years of marriage, we are finally going to freshen our room up.  We are adding a bookcase "headboard."  I saw this in Southern Living years ago and loved it, then got to see it recreated beautifully in my friend Mandy's home.  So now we're putting our own spin on the bookcase by adding a cabinet on the bottom for some concealed storage and a place to lay our books at night.  Here's the inspiration picture from Pinterest:

The room itself will be lightened up with some neutral tan walls and I'm thinking the backs of the bookcases will be painted the dark peacock blue color.  I may get brave and paint the ceiling the greenish yellow and the bathroom will be the lighter blue.

We've had electrical run for two pendants to hang from the ceiling on the left and right sides of the bed in place of lamps.  We saw this in a hotel we stayed in once and loved the idea.  I got these cool fixtures for my anniversary present last week:

I can't wait to see all of this come together.  The bookcases will be installed next week (yay!) and then the painting won't be far behind.  I'll post pictures of progress.

And changing gears - a prayer request.  This week I learned of a 11-year-old little girl in our community who has been diagnosed with osteosarcoma, which is a form of bone cancer.  The treatment is very intensive and most of her extended family lives far away in Ohio.  They are coming in shifts to help out mom Christina, dad Trey, and baby brother (1 year!) Elijah and my moms bible study is taking them meals.  In addition, yesterday I mailed them a Olivia Charles Foundation prayer pager.  Please pray for Ally and her family and then dial 334-705-9213.  Thank you!

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:: Mt Laurel Spring Festival ::

Join us this Saturday, April 14th from 10-3 at the Mt Laurel Spring Festival in the Town of the Mt Laurel, off Highway 41 in Birmingham's North Shelby County. There will be lots of fun activities for the kids, great local and handmade shopping, yummy food vendors and beautiful weather to enjoy!

We will be set up in front of the Prickett Properties office at 46 Manning Place. Stop by before 10 for the best selection. We'll be set up bright and early.

Hope to see you there!

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:: Easter, etc. ::

John 11:25-26

Jesus said to her, "I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever believes in me will never die."


Tappy had Spring Break last week and came to our house to visit. One of Parrish's requested Tappy activities was dying easter eggs and Tappy had found the most ingenius tip on pinterest. (I know, a little late for use this year, but remember it for next!)

You can use your whisks to hold the eggs while you dye them. This is so great for kids. Parrish could have complete control of the dying process (which he loved) and we didn't have to worry about the eggs all getting smashed to bits as they hit the bottom of the cups!

Saturday we had our neighborhood Easter egg hunt. Notice the basket Parrish is holding. This is the one I purchased after I was chastised for sending one that was way too small into school with him. He claims I'm the reason he lost the hunt! Not only did he want a bigger basket, but he wanted it lined in camo! So, being the dutiful mom (no wonder Parrish thinks he's the boss around here!) I found this great online tutorial over at Make It and Love It and managed to line the basket just in the knick of time for the neighborhood hunt.

This is the face of true joy…a fistful of eggs filled with candy.

This is a fake smile. I had to bribe him with candy to get him to go stand by the bunny so I could snap a picture. I am not ashamed about this. Sometimes bribery has it's place in parenthood!

Saturday night we had a few friends over for dinner and a glow-in-the-dark Easter egg hunt. Did you see this on Pinterest? Here's what I'll say about those glow in the dark eggs. It's a really cool concept, but take my advice and buy the LARGER plastic eggs to stuff. It took us forever and lots of tape to get the glow bracelets inside our eggs. I also found that matching the colors helped them glow more - a pink egg with a pink glow bracelet, etc.
While the kids were hunting we did some serious sitting on the porch. I love that about our neighborhood - you actually use your porches!
The Gonzalez Family

The Cash Family (no pun intended). :) The dollars are from all the glow eggs Davis collected. Each family contributed $10 one dollar bills to the cause and we stuffed them in the eggs. The kids thought they were rich after the hunt. The girls cared more about the glow bracelets than anything else.

I tried a new recipe for Goat Cheese and Green Onion Muffins for dinner that night and it was delicious, so thought I'd pass it along here. I am a sucker for anything with goat cheese in it.

This is the first year in many that I haven't cooked a big Easter lunch for the family. CC is recovering from surgery in Florida (please keep her in your prayers) and Tappy was helping Aunt Liney move into a new apartment in Georgia, so it was just our little family. I thought I might be sad, but it was actually relaxing. We went to church then headed out to Easter lunch at The Melting Pot. Parrish was a little bored with cooking the meat (after all he had baby chicks to get home to), but when it came time for the melted chocolate, he perked right back up. He flagged the waitress down himself, not once-but twice, and asked for a refill of his strawberry bowl for dipping. I think he must have eaten 30 chocolate strawberries.

These are the aforementioned baby chicks. Can I just digress here and tell you that I have the sweetest husband? I mentioned to him a few times over the last month that I wish we could have baby chicks for Parrish on Easter. I still remember the year I woke up as a kid to discover a baby bunny in my Easter basket and my parents and grandparents standing over my bed to see my reaction! I wanted Parrish to have the same type of surprise. Anyway, I didn't really mention it again but Cannon remembered and last week called to inform me that he had it all worked out. He had called a local farm that agreed to take the chicks after we "babysit" them for a week. He went and picked them up Saturday and got them all settled with their food, water, shavings, and heat lamps so we could surprise Parrish on Sunday morning.

And as you can tell by his smile, his reaction couldn't have been any cuter. All day he kept saying, "Mommy, I just love those baby chicks." The one on his head here he named Eddie, the brown tinted one he named Otter. We have big plans for show and tell at school on Wednesday.

But one of the sweetest moments of the whole week was on "Good" Friday when I was laying down with Parrish at bedtime. We were talking about Easter and Jesus dying on the cross and I told him the day He died we now called Good Friday. He thought about this for a minute and then said, "But it's not really good, it's bad. I love Jesus so much." I couldn't stop the tears as I told him that yes, for Jesus it was the worst day of his life, but that for us it was good, because one day we'll get to live in heaven with Jesus and be with Sissy again.

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:: Classroom Easter Treat ::

If you're anything like me you may still be looking for a cute, inexpensive, treat to wrap up for your child's classmates. Easter seemed to sneak up on me this year and it dawned on me yesterday that I still didn't have anything and the class party is this Wednesday! What I found is a cute, useful, and fun gift (that won't give your kid a sugar high!) Miracle-Gro Kids Mini Greenhouses are very simple. They come with a dehydrated soil packet that you hydrate with water and seeds for veggies or flowers that you then plant. It's that simple. I bought veggies (they have tomato, cucumber, white eggplant, and sweet pepper) to give the boys in Sweet P's class and flowers (they have zinnias, marigolds and sunflowers) for the girls.

At only $1.30-something a piece they are a cute gift that won't break the bank and will give parents of the kids in your class a fun project to do with their preschooler over the long, hot summer ahead!
Oh, and you can buy them at Wal-Mart (because they have everything).

Happy Easter!

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:: And the winner is...::

Jess Putnam!

You're the proud new owner of this reclaimed bench from Olivia Charles Antiques.

Thank you to all who entered. If you're not already our FB friend, please visit our page at www.facebook.com/oliviacharlesantiques and "like" us. We'll be announcing another fun giveaway in a few weeks!

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