Weekend Review: The Good, The Bad, and The Retail Therapy:)

This weekend started rough.  While taking pictures of our fall front porch, my camera displayed an error message pertaining to the need to reformat my SD card.  You know, the same SD card that has nearly 8 GB of family and blog pictures on it that I've never backed up on a computer.  It's the SD card that I've been using since mid-late August.  Two months of photos = hundreds and hundreds of images.  The pictures I worried about most were the pumpkin picking images, Lucky's birthday photos, Fall fun pictures at Gram and Gramps.  The videos of the kids through this time.  Ahhh!!

I got all panicked when I read the error message and my hands got fumbly and then my camera hit the concrete and broke.  I didn't mind having a broken camera (Even though I have a nice Canon DSLR, I predominantly use a Nikon Coolpix camera that we picked up a couple years ago for about $50 or so on sale.), as long as I got those pictures back.  I stayed up until 1 a.m. researching and downloading several free SD Card Recovery Programs to no avail.  Images = Gonezo.

In terms of blogging, usually this loss wouldn't be too big of a deal because I blog in real time.  I complete a project and blog about it within a few days of completing the project.  As I've posted here and here, however, this particular time was different.  We have so many projects that we've just wrapped up that I could write blog posts for at least a month.  Maybe more.  Now, many of those posts will not have proper 'before' images.  Insert huge sad face here.  I'll be doing some digging for 'before' pictures on older photo files, BUT that's going to take time.

Let me wrap this whole thing up for you with some lessons I learned regarding this experience:

1.  Always back up photos at least weekly.  I hadn't been doing this because our desktop computer is spotty at reading photo cards, and I wrongly assumed that my net book didn't have enough memory to handle all those images.  My computer savvy husband has recently informed me otherwise.  ***IF you have important pictures on your camera card, stop reading this post and back up your pictures NOW!!  You can thank me later:).

2.  TGFB = Thank Goodness For Blogging.  I use the best images in my opinion for the blog, so I have lots of my favorite pictures saved on my blog.  My blog, also got backed up on Friday as well.  I'll be spending time this week copying over pictures from the blog to my computer picture folder as well.  I figure the more places I save them, the better.

Now here's a question for you.  What would you do at 1 a.m. after learning that 2 months of important pictures have been erased?  Want to know what I did?  I engaged in some good old fashioned retail therapy.  I don't really support shopping as a form of a distraction, but I think lots of people do it, myself included.  I didn't need to shop for a new camera since I was able to fix mine with duct tape (what can't that stuff do?), but I did give myself a budget of $15 so I wouldn't get carried away.

Here's what I bought:

I used a coupon code found on this post and scored a FREE (free shipping too!) Veggie Tales DVD.

via

I also did this deal and scored the sweater I was eyeing at Target plus a pair of jeans for $2 less than the sweater cost alone at the store.  My total = $13.  And that includes shipping to my home!

via

Total: $13 for a DVD, pair of jeans and sweater all shipped to my home!  Not bad.

As for the rest of the weekend, we were busy!  We finished up our very last painting projects, and we brought in lots of new furniture.  We rearranged rooms and spaces.  

We had a family movie night with pizza!  (No pictures of this because I was still trying to recover my images at this point.  The kids were being so cute though!)

We shopped for our Halloween Costumes and spent time putting them together....we're almost done:

We finally finished up caulking our front step using concrete caulk (icky stuff) and sand to mask the grey caulk color:

We gathered doll house gear and we'll start work on it soon:

We went on a date night to a wonderful new restaurant and enjoyed calamari and beer.  We made our typical post date trip to Target and found these Missoni boots on clearance for $6.26 (75% off):

Missoni clearance is starting!  I think these boots went early and fast because they were marked 'online only' on the clearance tag.  I'm betting 'online only' items that were returned at the store are clearing out now.  I expect more clearance soon, although after reading this post, I'll be waiting for 75% off prices before I consider buying much of anything else from the line.  

And we made some bones using this recipe from Disney Family Fun Magazine:

And these ingredients:

Mini marshmallows, pretzel sticks and white melting chips (found at Walmart in the Halloween section)

Here is what we gobbled up:

These may be our second round of bones.  The salty-sweet combo is great (especially when frozen) and we gobbled up our first batch.  The pictures I took of our first batch got gobbled up during my 8 GB photo card disaster, so we used the opportunity to try it again!  They were just as good the second time.  Gobble.  Gobble.  Can you tell I'm looking forward to turkey day festivities?

All in all, a pretty good weekend!  Hope you all had a great weekend too!  

P.S. Bill is pretty excited about this:

Our garage is for cars again!  Just in time for the cold!!

Lovely June Weekend Update

We are weekend warriors.  I can't believe all that we did in two short, beautiful days!  There were Home Depot and Menards runs with the kids, swimming at our community pool, bubbles, painting, sewing, electrical outlet moving.  Seriously busy.  Seriously fun.

We have many projects going on right now.  We're in the middle of most of them.  Lots of times one project leads to another mini-project which makes things slow going at times.  We're constantly learning...I broke a sewing machine needle tonight, found a spare needle hidden in the 'sewing box' in the machine (Thanks for giving me a well stocked machine, Ma!) and changed it myself (no manual required)!  It's all about the little victories!

Here are some picture highlights from our weekend:

Bill's Painting Project

Lucky's Painting Project:

 One of my painting projects:

Cute from head to toe!!

Garden Explosion:

Cleaning out the Office:

Yuckers.

June Family Room Hint:

More Piping:)!:

Bubble Time:

World's Best Dad!:

I'm so excited to get a few of these projects done, so I can show off our hard work:)!

Family Weekend!

This weekend post is a couple days late...we enjoyed lots of family time this weekend, which allowed us a much needed break from our normal 'to do list'.   We did sneak one or two projects in though:).

Also, look what arrived on Friday.  About 6-8 weeks earlier than anticipated!  See this post for more information on my free Peacock Blue paint from Glidden.

Sealing our kitchen granite was our only big project this weekend.  It is supposed to be done annually, and I'm sure our kitchen was long overdue for sealer:

The granite has never looked as good since we've been living here!

 

Family Fun:

We put Charm in his Easter suit for church this week...why not?  It won't fit him next year!:)

Impromptu Photo Shoot in coordinating outfits:)!

Cousins: Lucky and Cici

Even Charm and Opa had matching clothes on!!

Charm refused to smile.  I think he wanted to play with bubbles instead. 

The Girls: Oma, Lucky and Cici

Kiki and Cici.  Who's the kid and who's the grown up?

Fish Feeding

My camera died immediately after taking the picture of Opa, Bill and the kids feeding the fish, so there are no more pictures for this post.

Bill and I did have some solo time, and we made the most of it with a Goodwill and Home Depot run.  And we also transplanted a few pine trees from Oma and Opa's yard into ours:).  Thanks Om and Op!

It was a lovely weekend, and now it's back to the grind...deal shopping and decorating and all:)!

Weekend Snapshot

Busy weekend.  Enjoy the pictures:).

Charm's Room.  Notice the missing crib?  Wow.  I need to make a mood board for this room, once I figure out what computer program to use to make a mood board.  Very exciting!

The Mood Board for Charm's Room is likely to include this score imported from the U.P. of Michigan from my sweet Ma. (Can someone say Jenny Lind Bed for the low price of $40!  Siderails included!)  Thank you!  Oma visited us late last week and we had so much fun!!

Target Run: Total cost for everything pictured: $8.22 (Rain boots were $3.74, Lucky Shoes were $2.48, T-shirt was $1.50, and wipes were $0.50).  Target Gift Card Balance: $22.85

Project Time.  Here's a nice before shot:

 And During:

More on this project (or two) later this week.

Leftover Fabric for a project for Lucky's Room!

Wall Art Project which probably won't be finished anytime soon, even though I really want my the floor in our bedroom back!  I'm too indecisive right now:).

Another Clubhouse addition: potted plants!  The planters were $1 each at Walmart.  I like the bright yellow (go figure!), and the plants were either chosen by the kids at Walmart this weekend (from the 90 cent section:)) or were fundraiser plants.

And here was the least intelligent decision we made this weekend  month  year.  Picture it: it's 8:15pm on a Sunday night, and we want to plant a strawberry patch.  There is a lilac tree in our way.  Our decision: get out a shovel and move the tree.

Brilliant!

But not really brilliant at all.  It looks reasonable here, but that tree had long, deep roots.  We were very, very careful with the roots to keep them intact, as best we could.  15 minutes into the process, it started to thunder.  16 minutes into the process, it started to pour.  Our baby monitor was saved.  The jury is out on my camera (no more during pictures)...it was out in the rain a bit longer before I remembered it.  18 minutes into the process, our shovel snapped in half.  I so wish I had a picture of it in 2 pieces.  We had another shovel, so we continued on...in the cold, hard rain.  I was pulling at the tree so hard, I was actually laying in a pile of dirt.  There was a long stretch of time when we took turns shoveling and pulling at the tree.  Then, the decision was made that we needed to saw off the roots that went straight into the ground, because we needed to be done already.  (So much for being root conscious.)  I'd say about 30 minutes into the process, I ran to get a bow saw.  38 minutes into the process, the tree was free.  We dug a hole and plopped the tree ball in the hole (about 4 feet from it's previous location--see the clay pot on the ground in the photo, that's where the tree is now.) and buried the roots as best we could.  We were done just about an hour after starting.  Sadly, the strawberries never got planted.  They will though, very soon!  And here's hoping our tree makes it after all that work!