Happy Birthday

Happy Birthday to my 'baby'.. she turned 10 today. If you've read my posts, you'd know she's my "Punkie Pie"... I still call her Punkie when nobody is around (shhh). She's growing up way too fast. The last few weeks she seems to have changed ... a bit more mature, liking clothes, hair gel, perfume and not the stuffed animals so much :( . She worked all summer cleaning out her room and donating toys and clothes. She even set aside some toys and what-nots for friends. Her birthday wish was to have her room repainted and she was to do all the picking of paint & decor. A bit frightening, she is only 10 and the visions can be wild. But we granted her wish (she did work quite hard and gave up way more than she was asked...). Green was her choice of color which surprised me because she's leaned towards oranges and reds for quite a long time and she's always been fond of blue so I couldn't gather why she chose green. She searched & searched online and had a vision so off we went to pick paint. She went right to the brightest colors where I went to the softest colors (now don't get me wrong, I love color and bright to boot, but man those bright paint scares me). I gave her the OK and said we'll try it.. hubby painted and cringed every brush stroke ... but low and behold .. it came out pretty darn cute if I say so myself...

Aqua Blue decor is what got her started on the green... so now I get why she went with green.. the pain color is called "Outrageous Green".


When she had her vision we went to Michaels and bought a wooden stand and she painted this night stand prior to picking out her paint color & bedding. Some how she found the bedding and window treatments at JcPenny to match the stand.Hanging Lanterns from Ikea ..

I made a lantern 'scrunchie" to cover to the lantern cords that were hanging down the back of her bed..We bought these pink shelves from Ikea last year and she really didn't want to keep them because they were pink. There was no way I was letting her replace them so we worked with the shelves by adding black storage containers and we made some coordinating accessories such as these fabric covered canvas boards on the top shelf.

She picked some fabric from Paula Prass' fabric collection to cover one of the canvas boards ...

Maybe she hasn't grown up too much... here she is playing with the doll house her Grammie gave her...

I think she had a great birthday. She was gitty and smiled all day!!Happy Birthday Punkie Pie!

Ikea Conshohoken, PA

During our trip to Dorney Park in PA I was able to convince my family to go to the Ikea in Conshoken, PA for a few hours. The hubby & kids don't want to admit but they had fun looking.

Here we all sit and pose in Ikea .. some nice man offered to take our picture together (we don't have too many of these)


My son has picked out this room for his room-to-be some day:


My daughter would love have this bed.


We are in the process of re-decorating her room and we are going to set up something like this for her to do her hair, nails and (someday) makeup:


Now I much much would like to have this for my kitchen. This counter top extender would do wonders in my small kitchen:



We all would like this nice simple cozy room to relax in:



And this room to play in ..


Now for the fun part . FABRIC ... I came home with way too much (wait, you can't have too much fabric). Here are a few samples of what I picked up during my visit:

Dorney Park & Wildwater Kingdom

We've been so busy this summer that it's been hard to keep up with the blogging and sewing. So all I have to blog for now are some fun things we did together over the summer.

A few weeks ago we did our annual trip to Allentown, PA to Dorney Park & Wildwater Kingdom. We've been going here every year since my kids were in diapers. I miss going to the kiddie waterpark and rides but now we can go on waterslides together and some of the amusement park rides (I'm not so big on rides. Any kind of motion makes me feel ill. I'm always the person that volunteers to hold everyone's stuff while the go on the rides. :) ).

This year we did several runs on Thunder Canyon. I can do this ride about 2 or 3 times and then it's time for a rest. But I think it's the only ride I can do multiple times. Everyone loves it!


We also enjoyed our traditional Gas Car Ride, Merry Go Round and Train rides (had to convince them that it was ok to still go on these rides even if the aren't 'cool')


Merry Go Round ...

Train...The only way to keep cool when it's mid 90's and humid is stay by the wave pool and share biggest shaved ice ever ... can you guess what flavor:


The kids made sure we stopped at the candy store to fill up on sour sugar:



When we take this trip each summer we try to visit some other places the next day, spend the night and then go back to Dorney for a second run to go on favorite rides and then head home. This year our "in between stop" was the Philadelphia Zoo and Ikea .. more on those places soon!