From Goodwill to goodie!

So I'm still trying to put the finishing touches on our new Hawaiian home, and with a slew of visitors heading our way in the next few weeks my OCD-ness (as my husband calls it) is kicking into overdrive. This means details people! :) I'm sure our visitors won't care or maybe even not notice whether the chairs outside are black or espresso, but apparently it matters somewhere in my brain. ;)

Anyways, I found this little lantern a few weeks ago at the Goodwill ~ can I just say the pickings here are much, much slimmer than at home so a good find is a great find here! It reminded me of West Elm accents, which is my new favorite inspiration by the way. It seems the older I get ~oh my gosh, I sound so old! :( ~ my decorating tastes are changing. Remember my shabby-chic phase Mom? :) Anyways, I'm into contemporary-traditional now (I think!) But anyways, this lantern was cute, but not complete.


Pay no attention to the lil' buddha belly behind the scenes, or the fact that my shot was blurry because a certain K-9 was running around my feet, chasing down crumbs from the lil' buddha belly. Ahem. So when I got it home, I decided to yank out the orangy plexi-glass sides, which was no easy feat with all the little metal tabs holding it in. Grr. Anyways, one butter knife later and 16 little metal tabs later, here she is on an end table in our living room:


Ahh, a cheap, simple, and extremely easy makeover that cost a total of $2. The lantern was marked $4, but I snagged it 1/2 off and a 10% military discount. Hey, every penny counts, right? :) And I didn't need to paint it because black is an accent I've been using in picture frames and such. Now we enjoy her flickering glory at night while we watch our favorite flicks. One more "detail" marked off my never-ending, self-induced OCD list. Hope you all had a great 4th of July and hope to hear from you soon! :)

Love,
Jen

We're baaaack!

Hey everyone! Remember us, Bryan, Jen, Noah and Kiki? Can you hear us waaaaay over here across the Pacific Ocean? :) I can't believe it's been two months since my last post, shame on me! :( My friend Sara gently reminded me the other day about my lack of love for the blog when she sent me a post on Facebook that read "update your blog woman!" :) And then this morning I was talking to my friend Jessica from home and she asked "are you taking a bunch of pictures of your adventures?" "Umm....not so much" was my very sad reply. :( So it's naptime, the computer's fired up from a webcam chat with Nana and Papa earlier, and the camera's downloading all 5 pictures I've taken in the last two months to share. Haha...

Let's see...what's happened since oh, April when I was last on here :) May 10th (Mother's Day!) Noah and I bravely boarded a 767 at Honolulu Airport by ourselves and headed home for a three week visit! We took the red eye, as any good mother would plan because that means your child will sleep the whole flight, right? W.R.O.N.G. Apparently it means that you and your curly headed son will be the ONLY people awake on the plane, besides the pilot that is. Including a couple stewardesses! I brought the DVD player, the toys, the snacks, you name it I had it. In fact, the poor tourists in the row behind us got quite the shock when Thomas the Train smacked one of them in the face. Whoops.

Anyways, we completely and utterly enjoyed our trip home. Noah was so darn cute when we finally (15 hours later) arrived in good ol' Peoria, IL ~ he recently added a penguin suitcase to his harem of cute things and was successfully strolling through the airport like the stud that he is when all the sudden....Nana was there! He immediately dropped the suitcase like a hot potato and bam! it was over from there ;) Momma was old news, and Nana & Papa were hot tamales ;) Ah, it was a relaxing vacation, in the green countryside of Secor ~ okay, better move on I'm getting choked up :( We saw tons of family and friends, and got reaquainted with our first baby Kiki, who was livin' it up on the farm! I didn't realize just how much I missed that mutt until I saw her big brown eyes :) Speaking of, after much deliberation and paperwork and more deliberation, she successfully passed the veterinarians' requirements for admittance into Hawaii, I successfully overnighted her payment and notarized paperwork to Hawaii, and she successfully made the loooong trek back to Hawaii. Darn Hawaii. :) Poor Kiki, she was in her kennel for a total of 19 hours by the time it was said and done! And both times our plane landed, you could hear her going absolutely nuts. People around me, who by that time knew just how worried I was for her, laughed and said see, she's fine! I think she was hoarse for about three days after that ;) Anyways, the bad news is now that she's here, the poor thing is allergic to Hawaii. How can that be, you say? Well, she was itching like crazy, so my first thought was fleas. Dirty, nasty, here year round because it's too warm to kill them off fleas. UGH. You know how clean I am so that meant immediate action was required ~ bombs went off, bedding went in the trash, etc. Except she didn't have fleas. So another trip to the vet later, we find out that apparently dogs who are brought here from the mainland are typically allergic to the volcanic dirt, the humidity, etc. So we're armed with Benadryl and antibiotics and we'll see. Poor lil' thing :(

Anyways, enough for today ~ that's the update in the Willey Family. I'll leave you with some pictures of Kiki's first trip to the beach ~ needless to say, she wasn't a huge fan :) I solemnly promise to update this blog more frequently ~ in fact, I have an exciting, however cruel development in my scavenger hunt from Tori! Stayed tuned!

xoxo