DIY art project

I, like most girls that are on Pinterest find a lot of DIY projects. 99.9% of them I pin and forget about, but here is one project that I actually followed through on! I spotted this fabric leaf on canvas artwork that I thought would be a great way to save Brooke's paintings and turn into something that wasn't just ripped pieces of paper around our house.

Here's the inspiration from my pinterest page:

How ours turned out: (no flash)

With flash

Hanging in our bedroom

Summer, in instagram and phone pictures

It seems like I rarely pull my camera out of my purse these days. Majority of the time I'm capturing moments with my phone ... technology is crazy, huh? Here are a few pictures I pulled off of my phone ...

Shave ice is the perfect way to cool off on a hot day

Tiny Tots

Brooke drew our dog, Buddy

Little lady and her long hair

Spending as much time with the world's cutest nephew (who is starting to smile and coo ... melts my heart!)

Lychee is absolutely amazing

More shave ice (with pudding and mochi balls)

Crazy one

4

Yesterday Vance and I celebrated our 4th wedding anniversary. It seems surreal to think that four years ago I was putting on a white dress and walking down the aisle to say our vows. We were reminiscing last night and I couldn't help but mention that we were "just kids" when we married. We laughed about how crazy time flies by.

Wedding pictures are here

We went out to dinner at Outback Steakhouse, which is totally unromantic, but we're saving for a trip we're taking in a few weeks. It was also the first "real" date we went on, about 6 years ago.

Bud light (his), lava flow mocktail (hers)

We finished dinner at 7pm, didn't have our little munchkin with us and had no idea what to do with our time! We ended up walking around Walmart (and didn't have to look at toys!) and grabbed frozen yogurt.

4 years = 2 miniature dachshunds, 1 toddler, a townhouse ... so excited to see what's next!

Father's Day dinner

For father's day Vance spent the morning doing his absolute favorite thing in life -- golf. When he got home we went out to dinner with his family at Tsukiji, which was a Japanese buffet --- so extremely crowded, there were line after line for FOOD!

Here are some pictures from the night:

My second family :)

Little lady was a doll in these pictures but threw an epic tantrum once the night was over. It's been so long since she threw a tantrum like that, I was overwhelmed and so frustrated. It was a rough night, but the next morning she was as chipper and smiley as could be! Kids, I tell ya :)

House update: chalkboard wall

This past week we tackled a small project in our house-- we added a chalkboard wall! I've seen them all over pinterest. . . they've made me a little nervous, with all the dust and whatnot, but we bit the bullet and added one in our house.

This is what our kitchen cabinets looked when we first started doing renovations-- Vance had just taken out the top cabinets (leaving that ugly wire sticking out of the right wall). Notice the missing mirror on the bottom right -- it stayed like that for a few months!

I forgot to take a picture of us actually removing the mirrors from the cabinet, but it involved a LOT of scraping of this stupid tape that was totally and completely glued to the wood :(

The next step involved a lot of sanding on Vance's part-- this was the hardest part to make smooth!

Finally able to paint on the chalkboard paint!

White trim added, little lady already playing

Taken off of instagram (lorieiko)

21 weeks, what?

I can't believe I am actually doing a bumpdate. I am totally not one of those girls who takes pictures of her bump and posts them on facebook, prances in front of a camera or takes multiple bathroom portraits with her phone (okay, I've done this once or twice and felt like a noob. Couldn't figure out how to get my face in there with the camera flash and phone) So here are my awkward, I-don't-know-what-I'm-doing bump pictures!

It's hard to believe I am halfway done already! At the same time I feel enormous -- much bigger than the first time around. Had yet another ultrasound yesterday and little man was showing off his goods again, making it perfectly clear he was a BOY!

Moanalua Gardens

Recently we've been on the search for fun, FREE things to do with Brooke on the weekend. We aren't the stay at home type so this typically means we're at the mall, Target or Walmart looking around and buying things that we don't really need. This past weekend we went to Moanalua Gardens, which is where we took Brooke's 1st year pictures (though I don't think you're technically allowed to take professional pictures there).

The park is gorgeous and filled with beautiful trees and is impeccably maintained. When we got there, we witnessed an intimate little wedding ceremony so we clapped along with everyone, it was sweet.

Chaaaaarge! I wish I had brought B here more when she was a toddler and just wanted to roam around aimlessly

We brought bread to feed the ducks, but no koi pellets :( You can see the small wedding in the top right corner

I don't even know where she gets these crazy expressions from!

Me, 20 weeks PG. No bump picture, sorry. Oh and I need a tan.

Hide and seek

There's supposedly a famous tree from a Hitachi commercial that plays in Japan. I'm pretty sure this is the tree, but busloads of Japanese tourists come to take pictures of and in front of the tree. Again, not even sure if this is the tree! It's huge though, look how tiny Vance and Brooke are in front of it!

We have a picture on this bench from her 1st year photo.. unfortunately B didn't want to stop to take any pictures!

Merchandise for the famous Hitachi tree

House update: bathroom #2

It's been awhile since I posted a house update ... partially due to the fact that Vance is tired of doing work after he gets home from his "real" work and also due to the fact that renovating a house is EXPENSIVE. Luckily we aren't paying any labor (which is the biggest chunk of $$ when renovating), but the materials to renovate are still pretty pricey.

Here's the upstairs bathroom before we renovated. It was an awful green-ish color, with tile stuck to the wall (again)

Just ... yuck

We were initially planning to just paint over the green paint, but like the downstairs half bath, realized that the green paint wasn't really paint after all, but some random vinyl wallpaper that had to be scraped off. UGH. This = SO MUCH MORE TIME THAN WE INITIALLY THOUGHT

AFTER PICTURES:
We let Brooke choose the paint color (big mistake)... she picked some yellowy color and I'm not a huge fan, but I couldn't go back on my word, now could I? Please excuse my boxer shorts, I was trying to get the light fixture and the cabinet

Hubs still needs to install some sort of shelving system in the corner to cover the pipe

As you can see, this bathroom is definitely Brooke's ... she's pretty much the only person who uses it. Well, in a few months it will be hers and baby #2's :)