Grandma Hartley & her trays

There are things in life that just remind you of your favorite people. One of my favorite people, my Grandma Dorothy--she was beautiful inside and out. She never said a negative thing about anyone or anything, she truly lived the "if you don't have anything nice to say, then don't say anything at all" motto.

I feel her close when I see our breathtaking pink skies. I know she's watching over when I hear "Float On" by Modest Mouse. And I cherish my calls with Papa Richard when we reminisce about her & all the wonderful things she did for us.

So the other day when I walked into IKEA and saw some turquoise TV/bed trays, it was as if she was right there beside me. Memory after memory poured in.

You see, she had two tan TV/bed trays. She stored them on the floor of her hall closet, by the front door of their house, on the right side of the closet. On Saturday mornings when my brother and I, or my cousin Stephanie and I, would have sleepovers she would fix us Micky Mouse pancakes & we would sit in front of her TV eating our breakfast on these little trays. We typically didn't get to eat in front of the TV, nor in the living room so these Saturday mornings were special. She sit there in her rocking chair with one of her famous aprons still on and rock back and forth, back and forth as she just took it all in.

I couldn't pick up those TV/bed trays quick enough. & they instantly became a weekend staple in the South house. As I sat the trays up for the first time, I told Kaden and Logan about their Grandma Hartley and a sense of calm instantly came over me. She once again, was right there with us.

Instagram Collage with Sticky9 Magnets

A few months back I ordered a few new magnets from Sticky9, we were in need of updated magnets for the fridge. I believe I took advantage of the buy 3 get 2 free deal which would have given me 45 magnets, too many for sure but I could easily give away a few to my mom and MIL.

When the arrived a few short days later I was beyond confused. I had 4 separate envelopes from Sticky9. My first thought, maybe one set of the magnets was delayed...nope, they quadrupled my order. I rushed to the computer to check my bank account to ensure I wasn't charged and additional 3 times for my one order. I wasn't. So here we were with 200+ extra magnets...

I gave a number of them away. My sister got a pack, my SILs both got a group of pics, friends...if they were in a pic, they got a magnet. But I was still left with an obscene amount of pictures so I decided to create another Sitcky9 collage like I had a few years back.

All I needed was a new frame from Ikea. Simple right?! Well, as I pulled the last one I did off the wall I noticed that it wasn't black, it was a dark grey and Ikea for some reason didn't have dark grey so I decided instead of having a mix-match of frames that I pick up two frames and would redo the first one and change the frame from grey to black.

I sorted through magnets, pulled out any duplicates and started arranging them on the glass part of the frame. Note--I used these Ribba frames from Ikea. They measured 19 3/4 x 19 3/4 and were only $14.99. I have Ribba frames of all sizes and colors all over our house, Logan's gallery wall in his room, our striped-trip-down-world-series-lane-wall in the basement...

I purchased a piece of poster board from Hobby Lobby and cut it down to size to fit the frame, it was only around $2.50 with my 40% off coupon. Other purchases at Hobby Lobby were Scott removable tape squares but I found these on Amazon. I would need at least 64 of them since I would be using 64 magnets. & that was it for my supply list.

While Justin watched Sunday Night Football--playoffs were on--I sat on the floor and taped each magnet to the poster board. I placed the bottom row first and then the far row on the right. After getting the spacing correct on those two rows, I worked from the bottom-right hand corner up in a diagonal fashion and finished at the top-left corner. By working in this direction I was able to keep the spacing the same, well as close as I possible could without marking it all out.

I finished the project off with a coat of Modge Podge. The first time around I did not use this but I noticed that some of the magnets were starting to pull away so one quick coat with Modge Podge gave it a little more stability. I tested this out with 3 extra magnets I had first before applying it to the first project I did and after seeing the result I then covered both Sticky9 collages with it. Gives it a little more of a finished look too.

Literally took very little time to do and was very inexpensive to do---especially since I had so many Sticky9 magnets that were sent to me by mistake. Although, if you buy when the deals are good, getting 64 magnets isn't too bad and it would make for a super cute gift or for us, these will end up in the boys' toy room as wall art.

Just another way I use some of the pics I take & store on Instagram.

2017 Winter Apocalypse

The 2017 Winter Apocalypse will certainly go down in history but not for the reason we were expecting. It will go down in history because it was hyped up soooooo much and NOTHING happened. They called school off the night before "it" was expected to hit but yet it wasn't to hit until after 6 pm that evening and they still called it for the day. The boys ended up with an extra day off from school and while we kept waiting for something to happen with the weather, it just never did.

The boys played all weekend--mostly with their Hot Wheels which they hardly ever play with so this was a nice change of pace for them.

Saturday morning we had nothing to get up for because when they canceled school for Friday, they also canceled all school activities which included the boys' basketball games. For the most part, we stayed home again, waiting for something to happen. Justin checked out the roads and when he gave me the thumbs up, I took off to a movie with Jen--La La Land was calling our names.

Saturday night we chilled at home together. I finally got the last of the Christmas presents put together and the boys spent the rest of the night practicing their pitching.

Sunday brought more of the same until it was time for our Chiefs to play. The game was scheduled for noon but then with the "pending" weather they moved it to ensure safety of the spectators. We had invited friends and family over to watch the game and although are numbers dwindled we still had a good showing but the game wasn't going the way that we wanted it to. Sadly, the Chiefs lost at the very end with a questionable, subjective, holding call which would have tied the game. Justin was bummed. I was bummed. BUT I didn't have to work the next day and the boys were off so we had that going for us.

& we had been cooped up for way too long, it was time to get the boys out and about. Over the last few weeks we have watched most of the Star Wars movies so what better way to spend our morning than heading to the movies to see Rogue One. Cousin Colton, Becky, and Grammy met us there too.

Kaden has the sniffles really bad but thankfully Grammy and I were the only ones that could hear him sniffing through the entire movie--poor kid just wasn't feeling well.

Although we spent most of the boys' 5 days off from school at the house waiting for this ice storm that never came, it was also a wonderfully quiet break. The holidays were so hectic but not these 5 days, they were peaceful.