Happy 11th birthday, Dear Angelique!

In honor of Kippy's 11th birthday, here are 11 fun facts about Angelique Grace Lindgren:

 11.  Kippy is always willing to try new things and has no fear.  She is all about adventure & action.

10.  Kippy is active; in fact she can hardly sit still.  She loves playing soccer, swim team,  being in dance & anything outdoors.  In the summer, her hair gets bleached blond by the sun and her skin turns golden brown.

  9.  Kippy has a beautiful smile in part thanks to braces when she was 9 years old, as well as upper and lower expanders.

8.  Kippy is a voracious reader.  In fact, last year as a 4th grader, she had the 2nd highest number of AR reading points in the entire OLV school.

7.  Everyone in our family and many of her close friends, call her Kippy, although her school & soccer friends only call her Angelique.  You have to be part of her inner circle before she will let you call her "Kippy".

6. Angelique was born 4 weeks early, even though I had been on bed rest for 6 weeks.  She had dark black hair and everyone said she looked just like her daddy.

5.  Kippy broke her first bone in her foot when she was 18 months old and had her first stitches when she was 5 years old.

4.  Kippy is adventurous with her food too.  She loves shrimp, tomatoes, sushi, mushrooms & asparagus.

3.  Kippy has a deep love for all animals, especially marine animals.  She still says she wants to be a marine biologist when she grows up.

2.  Kippy trained our dog Bella several tricks including to roll over, wait, stay, & dance.  She entered Bella in a local dog show and earned 7th place in 2011.

 1.  Kippy donated her hair to Pantene's Beautiful Lengths when she was 9. Kippy is generous, loving, sensitive, caring and beautiful inside and out.  She is a blessing!

Happy birthday, to our one-of-a-kind, dear Kippy!

A quick & easy Fall craftey

I got a deal through Groupon on this Fall vinyl for $6 and was able to team it up with some scrap wood, paint, Fall scrapbook paper, wire and presto... fun new Autumn sign.  Here are the steps.

 The "Autumn" vinyl is a very dark chocolate brown and approximately 4x12.  The "we rake, we pile, we jump" vinyl is a bunt orange color and about 2x12 in size.  The plan was to layer them together.

 Steve cut a scrap board down to 6x14 for me and it was base coated with black paint.

 I looked through my stash of Fall scrapbook paper for some inspiration on what would go best with the vinyl.

 I added a crackle medium over the black and then painted a butter-cream color over it so the black would show through.

 A little Mod Podge was used to adhere the paper, which I had torn and chalked to distress.  I covered the front with two thin coats of Mod Podge (letting it dry in between coats) before sticking down the vinyl.

Two screws added at the top of the board anchor the hanging wire which I spiraled to add some texture and finished off with a bright orange bow.

 Easy-peasy.  The end.

Creativity Abby-style

Earlier this summer, Abby told me she wanted to create some artwork for her bedroom.  She said she wanted to do bright color splashes with some of her favorite quotes. After talking it through, we decided to get some canvases and let her do her thing.

Together, we found a large 16 X 20 inch and two smaller 8 X 20 inch canvases at Hobby Lobby, which were all 30% off.  (I love me a bargain).  We also picked up a set of neon poster paint for $4.00.

I never took any in progress pictures, but Abby first used a roller to coat the canvases with black paint left over from painting her dresser.  It took two coats to get a good base coverage.  Then she experimented with splattering the neon paint all around.  Some of the blobs were really big and some were small.  Even though drop clothes were used out in the garage, there were a few stray flecks of paints on some of the walls and on the work bench.  It took a solid 24 hours for the paint blotches to dry.  

Once the background of the canvas was completely dry, Abby stamped some quotes and words that were significant to her onto the surface using white acrylic paint & my Making Memory foam stamps.

The resulting artwork is fun, bright and inspirational to Abby.

And so totally her.  Two of her bedroom walls have the painted canvases decorating them.

I hope Abby continues to surround herself with images and phrases that keep her positive and moving forward in life, because sometimes we do fall, but what is important is the lessons those falls teach.

IMAGINE, BELIEVE and you will ACHIEVE, my dear daughter!

Celebrating with Jason & Kara

 We were blessed to be able to witness our nephew, Jason, marrying the love of his life, Kara, on 09-10-11.  It was a wonderful outdoor wedding at FairHills Resort on Pelican Lake.  Couldn't have asked for better weather or a more romantic setting.

 I didn't bring my Nikon, so only have a few pics from my mini point-and-shoot camera, so please don't judge the quality & lack of variety too harshly.

 The reception was so much fun and was great to catch up with family and meet our niece-in-laws' family as well.

So surprising that our family got to attend two weddings in the same week after nearly a 3 year long dry spell for weddings.  The dressing up part is one of my favorite aspects given that my typical work attire is my sweats with hair in a pony tail. Just one of the curses blessings of working from home for 9 years and running.

 Kippy & Abby especially love the dancing part of the celebration.

Much love and many blessings to Kara & Jason!

18 hrs with my bestie!

So grateful for the time I got to squeeze in with my Kathy while she was at a business conference in Minneapolis.  I arrived downtown about mid afternoon on Saturday, September 17th, just as she was finishing up her last meeting. 

 

We did some shopping, ate lunch and walked around downtown.

 

 Then we had a slumber party in Kathy's fabulous hotel room complete with grapes, brie, crackers and wine.  Of course, we stayed up late talking and catching up since we hadn't seen each since last October (nearly a YEAR!).  So much to share and so little time.

We were up early Sunday morning and I got Kathy off to the airport in time so she could get back to her family.  It was so hard to say good-bye after such a short time, but I wouldn't trade it for the world.  We only had 18 hrs together, but it was as important as breathing to me.

I love MY Kathy!

Experiencing Sioux Falls

Labor day weekend, our family went to Sioux Falls to celebrate Gina & Tom's wedding. While we were there, we had some time to have some fun ~ Lindgren-style. After breakfast, I took the family to see Falls Park, which I had only recently discovered this past summer with my BFF's.
We did a ton of walking and went up into the tower which had a great view of Falls Park as well as the downtown buildings. It was a surprising cool morning (only 65 degrees) and fairly breezy, but once in the sun, it felt perfect.
As we explored, I was clicking away on my Nikon, trying to capture the beauty.
We walked from the Falls Park to DTSF (Downtown Sioux Falls) to see the sites and to take in the Sculpture Walk. I'll have to say, we had a ton of laughs as we worked on posing in imitation of the bronze sculptures.
Some of our imitations, were pretty spot on, if you ask me! Steve about killed me with his pose of a pregnant woman & a man in pain. Kippy's raccoon impersonation & bad-hair donkey face make me laugh out loud. I love Abby's stop-action shots with both Kippy & her dad.

I was surprised to find that my ipod case looked just like the Pagan Apples sculpture. Who knew?
There was a lot of beautiful sculptures and each of us had several favorites. It was like being at an art museum, only better because we were outside & weren't being judged for our crazy antics.
Of course, I think pictures of my Abby girl....
and Kippy-girl are the most precious of all.
We ended our exploration with a wonderful lunch at Phillips Avenue Diner, which also happened to be the first solid food Abby had been able to eat since getting her upper braces on two days earlier. Good times!

A wonderful wedding!

We are so blessed to have been able to celebrate the marriage of Tom & Gina on September 4th in Sioux Falls. Gina - beana - ballerina, is such a very dear friend to both Steve & I. Gina has been a part of our lives since 1988. A fun fact is Steve & I became friends with Gina independently since she was a double Finance and Sociology major at Northern State University, Gina had classes with Steve and with me. We have both loved her forever, it seems. We have shared so many of life's milestones together including college graduation, career choices, marriage, purchase of first homes, birth of our children, birthdays, vacations as well sorrows and loss.
We were able to meet the man of Gina's dreams, Tom Jacobs, over the weekend and witness their commitment to one another. Tom & Gina have a combined family which includes 5 children, Jessica, Josie, William, Samuel & Lydia. Their wedding was absolutely perfect & so wonderful! Just looking at the few pictures I had taken makes me weep all over again. {Sigh} weddings bring out the happy tears for me and probably all ceremonies for that matter.
Three beauties... Josie (13), Abby (14) and Jessica (13). Our combined first born daughters are only 6 months apart in age.
Gina and I have always been told we look like sisters and I can say that our girls look like they are related. It must be because we are sisters-at-heart for sure.
Abby & I spent some time at the Empire Mall getting fancy hair before the wedding.
Can't say that we were totally in love with the results, but at least it saved us from having to do our own hair.
Our color-coordinated family had very tired feet by the end of the night since we didn't sit out on very many dances. It was an evening filled with laughter, love and memories. Congratulations, Gina and Tom!!