Super Bowl Beauty Shop

Laurie and Savannah play beauty shop during the super bowl.

CBS Broadcasters

Is it just me or does everyone else think the CBS broadcasters want the Colts to win?? Grrr... The broadcast sounds a little heavy on the Colt side to me. Maybe they think they have to make up for there being more Bears fans at the game.

GO BEARS!!!

Makeup Artist (LITERALLY!!)

Laurie and Savannah had a little fun last night doing makeovers. Well, let me correct that... SAVANNAH had fun last night giving herself and Laurie makeovers :)

Check these cute pictures out...

Is there a future in Mary Kay for Savannah?? She even refers to demonstration pamphlets as she does Laurie's makeup.

She works with GREAT detail in making sure Laurie's makeup is done correctly.

Savannah reveals her own makeover... :)

Then, Laurie's makeover is revealed :O

The combined work of our little makeup artist

One more look at Laurie's new look... I'm sure Cosmo will want to use this for their next cover model!!

What a fun and awesome time for Laurie and Savannah... And yes, they left their makeup on all evening, through supper and a movie (at our house NOT at a theatre). Laurie had to clean Savannah's makeup off after she fell asleep on her lap.

Colts Cheerleader

Here she is... the NEWEST Colts cheerleader...

Isn't she adorable!! She was so excited to get her "Colts dress."

Bear Excitement

Only three more days until...

Is it a bad thing that I'm actually praying for the Bears to win? I'm sure God understands... He's GOT to be a Bears fan!! Don't you think?

I bought myself a new orange Bears jersey the other day... Of course I wanted orange because it is also a U of Florida color... you know... the COLLEGE NATIONAL CHAMPION FOOTBALL AND BASKETBALL TEAM... GO GATORS!!

Anyway... I tried to buy Andrew a jersey, but we couldn't find a store that had children sized jerseys... so a navy blue Bears NFC Champion long-sleeved shirt had to do :( The kids had given Laurie a white Bears jersey for her birthday... so we were all set. Notice... that I had left Savannah out. She was asked if she wanted a Bears shirt and she said, "No, I want a dress for the other team we root for." "You mean the Colts?" she was asked? "Yeah, the Colts." "Do you mean a cheerleading outfit?" "Yeah... I want a cheerleading outfit for the Colts!!"

So... guess what Daddy did for his little Princess the other night... Ordered a Colts cheerleading outfit, and even paid for 2-day delivery because I was afraid it might not make it in time if weather for some reason got bad (it was coming from Florida). Laurie started calling us "Colt-ilocks and the 3 Bears". I REALLY wish I had a Blue Bears jersey now for Andrew... because we want to have our picture taken on Sunday and a jersey for Andrew would really top it all off :)

No word yet on the bid I made... I actually re-bid it because I realized I was too high. I've made follow-up calls, but... we'll see. I'm putting a lot of time into getting things organized for Tropical Touch... I'm excited about making the changes to my business. I'm hoping that over the next year I'll be able to really grow in the interiorscape part of the business. I've been making supply contacts for the past week and am feeling good about the ability to get the plants I want/need and a wide variety of containers for almost every interior style. If you pray... please lift up my business for me. I have such a strong urge to go this direction with my business. I know it won't happen over night and that I need to be patient.

Business cards should be done by next week and that will give me something more to give than just words. And, though I've done a lot of outdoor containers with tropicals and annuals... I've done next to nothing indoors. Granted, some of my outdoor arrangements could have easily been interior... but I need some interior business so I can use them for my portfolio. I'm really limited on what I have done. At least I have a decent portfolio of exterior work.

I REALLY wish I could avoid doing flower beds all together this year... but... I don't think the new direction of the business is going to grow quickly enough for me to give that part up with my core customers. But, I will be declining perennial, shrub and tree planting... unless it's just a few perennials here and there. I really want to focus exclusively on interior/exterior tropical/annual containers and small tropical/annual entry and patio beds... and of course the weekly maintenance of them. Even if that means accepting new business and possibly saying no to some things that my core customers want done. Of course... I can always sub-contract work out... which is probably what I am going to do with some things. I'll oversee it, but I won't physically do it.

I never published better pictures of the kid's bedrooms... here they are... :)

Savannah's Room...






Andrew's room....





We still have to hang all of the framed train pictures in Andrew's room (10 pictures in all, in groupings of 3 and one individually... they're from a 2006 train calendar that Andrew had hanging in his room... he LOVED the calendar and I wanted to somehow use them) and I want to use some track and the engine and coal car from the Lionel train set I had growing up to display on a couple of shelves.

We also still need to paint several butterflies and flowers purple (with pink and yellow accents on them) to put on her walls.

Ok... Laurie's home and it's 6 pm... need to spend some time with her and get ready for supper.

Since I started with a Bears item... I need to end with one, too...

DA BEARS!!

Corrected Colors on Blog

Ok... so I promise I won't use blue against that dark green background anymore... after I got done writing the last time I didn't go back and look at it to see what it looked like... WOW!!! It hurt my eyes to try and read that blue text against the dark green background!! So... I lightened the background and it seems to help a lot :) Thanks for the anonymous tip :)

New business name and focus

FINALLY!! My logo is done for the new business name. Business cards, letterhead and labels will be ordered tomorrow :) What a LONG process to get this logo done, though. It was a lot more work than the logo for Gardener For Hire. Hopefully at least the front page of the website will be up and going in the next few days. A friend is doing it for me and we met the other day for lunch to discuss it. Since I've never done a business website, I had no idea what to do for it. He gave some good suggestions and hopefully I'll be able to do my homework over the next few days to get him the information that's needed for the different pages.

I made my first bid on a interiorscape job today... it's a chain restaurant that has been having the janitor care for all of it's plants since last fall. YIKES!! Needless to say... the plants need some help. I actually made three different quotes... Interior Maintenance, Outside containers (none currently) and Initial Setup (suggested replacing some plants, repotting all the others and adding a couple more in places). Hopefully I'll hear something positive back in the next couple of days.

A bit of bad news last night... My Uncle Jerry died after being hospitalized for the past week. He had failed a stress test twice and after the second test they immediately admitted him. He seemed to be doing ok for a few days, but then took a turn for the worse during the weekend. He deteriorated quickly between Monday and Wednesday. Uncle Jerry had lived in Reno for years, but moved back to Illinois a few years ago after having severe health problems. He was given a second chance at life and made the most of it. Though he was unable to do many things physically because of his health, he was able to spend a significant time with his father and mother. Uncle Jerry was an alcoholic and chain smoker for years, but while living in Reno, to everyone's surprise admitted himself to care for his alcoholism. Though he continued to smoke excessively, after his near-death experience that brought him back to Illinois he quit smoking, too.

The wonderful thing over the past few years since returning to Illinois was seeing how Uncle Jerry became active in a small church in Pekin and for the first time probably in his life had a personal relationship with God. In fact, when my Grandma and Grandpa (his parents) were looking for a church in Pekin, guess who invited them to HIS church? Uncle Jerry. Funny thing is... the young pastor there at the church at the time was someone from my brother's youth group. At the time there was an unknown connection.

More on Uncle Jerry later... Right now I have to get the house a little cleaned up before Laurie gets home. Oops... there she is... TOO LATE AGAIN!!

Bad pictures, bad day, bad weather

Ok... so the camera phone can only do so much... those pictures of Savannah's room are REALLY bad. Only one picture shows the walls as pink. I guess I'll have to use the "real" camera and post them later today.

Laurie's been gone all week to St Louis and we are VERY VERY VERY ready for her to come home. She'll be home Friday afternoon. The week has gone well until yesterday afternoon... TRAIN WRECK!!! Actually, it wasn't that bad, just had a daughter who decided to express her opinion about picking up her room in front of a friend that was over. Needless to say it led to her Barbies being taken away for a week (to which she replied, "Ok" - GRRRR... she wasn't suppose to like that!!) which led further to a quick trip to another room and a spanking. To THAT she did not say, "Ok." I just love seeing the stubborn side of my daughter and hearing her proclaim "NO" to me. Makes me a proud parent.

Anyway... after we took her friend home and picked up Andrew from school she continued with whines, cries and a whoa-is-me (is that how you spell that??) attitude. She desperately needed a nap, so I made her lay down on her bed for 30-minutes... of course she cried the whole time because Andrew was watching "her favorite movie and she couldn't watch it with him" (Pocohontas). After she came down from her nap (yeah, right... a "nap"), she continued to remind me that she missed her favorite part of her favorite movie. THEN I couldn't help but start to see humor in it all and I kept having to look away and smile.

So it got better when we went to the church for Andrew's choir practice, but I think only because she got to have McDonald's for supper. She had two more break-downs... one was they forgot to include ketchup with her happy meal, the other I can't remember. We have SUCH a drama queen. Too bad she doesn't like to be on stage... she could make a lot of money! :)

I rushed her to bed as soon as I could after we got home and after a quick chat with Mommy on the phone... she fell asleep pretty quickly. Thankfully, this morning has been very smooth so far.

Could it be that winter is finally on it's way? It's 41, cloudy and windy right now... it's suppose to start getting colder after Friday with freezing rain and snow showers a possibility Sat - Mon. I was really liking the consistent 50-degree plus weather we were having :)

Andrew SO wants a good snow so we can go sledding. So (gulp!!) I'll hope for ONE big snow for him so we can. Growing up it seemed like we went sledding several times every winter. Wow... that brings back some good memories of Paul Babcock and I... we would literally be out for hours sledding either at Gibson Woods (a local golf course in Monmouth) or on the trails in the woods behind our house.

It's always fun to think back to childhood memories and "relive" events in your mind and heart... a special Christmas, a certain birthday, an unforgetable vacation or trip, a celebration or party, or an ordinary day that for some reason has always been memorable.

Ok... it's time for me to get back to my work at hand... '06 business finances, laundry, dishes and '07 planning for my new business. Yes... my NEW business... but, I'll address that one later.

Savannah's new bedroom

Savannah's new PINK room. She loves it! It is SO her! We still have to put up her purple butterflies and flowers she wanted on her wall - they'll have yellow and pink accents on them :-) My cubbie shelves turned out great. I love the high gloss white paint on the trim and furniture (awesome Pittsburgh paint!). Lots of painting, but so worth it! She feels like a princess in her new room. :-)
Just what I wanted!

Andrew's bedroom

Andrew's new train-themed bedroom. I still have about 10 train pictures to hang around the room. I'm also going to do something with my old Lionel train set in his room.

Star Wars addict

And Andrew? Well - he's all about his Star Wars computer game right now. We've already had to put a cooking timer by the computer!
His life priorities are trains, Narnia and Star Wars. That could make an interesting story line - Luke Skywalker fighting for Aslan and traveling on a train thru Narnia. :-)

Creative heart

Savannah loves to create - for Christmas she recieved lots of beads to make bracelets & necklaces. She also loves to give us art pieces to hang around the house. Since we redecorated her room she's not allowed to tape her drawings on her walls anymore. :-)