Sunday, June 26, 2011

Will I ever make this a regular thing???

Hmm, all you daily and weekly bloggers out there, hat's off to you!  Remembering/making yourself blog regularly is a very hard thing for me to do!  I have a few projects I would like to show you but I think I will try to spread them out over a few posts...gives me something to "post regularly" with...I guess.

I haven't posted since March and a lot has happened.
Here are a few things I will post about:
--My daughter, Belle, turned 4 with a wonderful Tangled Birthday party.
--I made some quick and simple mini cupcakes for my daughter's preschool Easter party.
--On April 27th, we were affected by the tornado outbreak in Alabama.
--I made two cakes, my first 3-tiered cake and a Little Mermaid cake.
--I made 3 paper origami flower balls to hang above my daughter's new "big girl" bed. (This project is still in the works!)
--I made some Duct tape roses and turned those in the hair barrettes and rings.
--We moved back into our house on June 21st after construction was complete...more about this in a minute.
--My daughter and I made her dad, my husband, a Father's Day/Birthday cake.
--I helped my "sister-in-law by marriage" decorate for her daughter's 5th birthday luau party.

I've been busy...just not productive when it comes to posting blogs.  I am going to jump Belle's party for the moment and discuss the April 27th tornadoes.  Unfortunately, but thankfully we had only relatively minor damage to our house.  We live in Cordova, AL about 1.5 hours north-ish of Tuscaloosa.  We had two tornadoes, I believe, go through our town that day, a smaller one early that morning, and the big one at about 5pm.  The latter tornado resulted in a tree falling on top and into our daughter's room.  The three of us were huddled in the hallway and were fine. 

We are very thankful to still have a house...a fixable house.  In the following months, we saw house after house being demolished because of the extent of damage or other reasons.  It has been a very sad thing to watch.  Many people lost their homes and have had to find new places to live.  We were fortunate enough to live near my in laws who were not affected by the storms, and they were nice enough to let us stay with them for nearly 2 months while our house was fixed.

We only just moved back into our house on the 21st and are happy to be home.  My house is still all out of sorts with things floating around out of place and things needed to be thrown out or donated, but it's slowly coming back together.  I have a hard time motivating myself to get stuff back in order.  I have so many things I want to make to decorate Belle's new "red flower" room, but I find myself refusing to let myself "play" when there is so much that "needs" to be done.  LOL Anyone ever feel like that?  I guess I'm trying to use paper crafting and cake decorating as a reward for good behavior.  LOL

Anyway, I am going to leave you with a few pictures of my house when it was damaged and the town shortly after the storms...I will have to go take pictures of my completed house....I haven't gotten around to that either!
PS: I hate trying to get pictures to work on here...sorry for the strange arrangement...I'll get better, I promise.

This tree ripped up our drive.



This used to be a tree.

Another shot of the tree in front.

Back yard.

Overlooking the town.
A Church that will have to be torn down.

The city again...that red truck is parked where a laundromat used to be.
Trees covering a stree.

Belle's poor toys...
The house once the tree was removed.

The trunk of the tree that was on our house.
...big hole...

A tree fell where my husband usually parks...he was at work at the time.
The view into Belle's room after...

More poor toys...
It amazes me that that half of the room was perfectly fine. (That red thing on the kitchen is a paper lantern...)

...more toys...I hadn't cleaned her room before the storm...

...that wood on the left is part of her bed...thank goodness she wasn't in bed when this happened...


This church used to have a second story on that flat spot...they have now demoed this as well...