Featured & More Vacation Pictures

I was featured at The Tattered Tag.  Hurry over to see Christina's Blog.  She has link parties, great recipes, and tons and tons of  ideas from other bloggers.    Thank you Christina for featuring me as the New Neighbor on the Blog.


Now, I wanted to post a few more pictures of my vacation.  Don't worry, it won't be like watching vacation movies.  I just wanted to post a few more since blogging is such a great way to journal events.  Plus, you have to see the house that we rented during the baseball tournament.  We could see the ball fields from a couple windows of the house, but our real view from the front door is worth a good laugh. 

Here are a few of my favorite pictures from our trip.

House that we rented for the week at the baseball tournament.  Very, very old.  The foundation was so unstable that every floor in the house was crooked or lumpy and creaked louder than I've ever heard.  Great place to rent though.

Look!  A sink in my bedroom.  Weird?  It actually was very handy.

I think I will open the closet door.  Wait...that's not a closet.  That's a shower.  Two of the bedrooms had closet showers in them.  Weird?  They also came in handy.

 Here is our view from our front door.  This was unexpected.  A grave yard directly across the street from our front door.  The only saving grace was that it was actually cool, with old headstones that were awesome to look at. 

We visited some great friends in Albany, NY and they have this fantastic historical home.  I died and went to heaven when I saw the wrap around porch.  Not a California thing.  I wish it was.  I think I am really an East Coast girl by heart.  I love the old houses and all the character.

Back view of the house.

Here we are with Morgan Freeman.  This is a wax statue just standing on the sidewalk in Time Square. 

 We love him.

We stopped in the gift shop in the NBC building and had to take a quick pic of fun memorabilia of our favorite TV shows.  The Office and Seinfeld.

Famous keyboard from FAO Schwarz Toy Store from the movie "BIG" with Tom Hanks.

My family.  Gary in back.  Dillon, Kelsey, Austin and me in the front.  I felt really short because I was wearing flats everywhere for walking.  I like heels.

Dillon at the end of the tournament.

Our team.  We were one of two teams with a girl.  The boys from other teams were intrigued to watch "the girl" play.  She hit two homeruns during the tournament.  There were 103 teams competing during this week of tournament from all over the US.  We ended in the top 32 teams.  We are somewhere between 16-32.  They don't rank teams specifically within this group but we were very happy with the outcome.

Dillon got to pitch for one inning during one of our games. 

Dillon at bat.

Now it's back to reality and I have a couple projects up my sleeve.  The oven is yelling at me to bake something, so stay tuned.

Carlo's Bakery

One of my favorite places that we went on vacation was Carlo's Bakery in Hoboken NJ.  He is the Cake Boss.  Although he wasn't there, his brother in laws were and the delivery boys.  This bakery is like a hole in the wall.  It is tiny.  You stand in a very long line, get a ticket and then you enter with about 25 other people squeezed in between shelves of pastries, cakes, pies, cookies, and sweets, sweets, sweets. 

It was much smaller than I ever imagined.  We hoped to see Buddy but if he was there, he was upstairs.  None of the sisters or his mother were there.  When we drove by on Saturday morning, the line was at least one (very long) block long.  We were glad we went on Friday morning, and waited for about 20 minutes in the line outside.  Locals say that there is always a line.  If Carlo's is open, there are people waiting to get in.  We couldn't tell if they were happy about that or not.

Here are some of the things they make. 

Me, my son Austin and my husband Gary.  They were good sports so I could go to the bakery.

We were on our way to Albany to have dinner with friends and we wanted to take a cake.  This is a Cannolli cake that was to die for.  Very, very good.  It was dark outside when we cut into it, and couldn't get a picture until the next morning and this was what was left.

Great bakery and super nice people inside.  Hoboken is the first exit out of the Lincoln Tunnel from NY into NJ.  It is the place for young, trendy people with lots of eateries outside and tons of young professional, hip people.  This was a fun place to walk around.  I will post pictures later of the World's Largest Pizza Slices which is located up the street from the bakery.  They are so big, it takes two plates to hold one slice of pizza.  The price per slice.....$3.00.  Can't be beat. 

Home from Vacation

Hello blogging friends.  My family just returned late, late last night from our 11 day vacation to New York.  I promise to post pictures soon and get caught up on my blogging.  I've missed it.  I wish I could say I had time to do a lot of shopping,  but we were there for a baseball tournament North of New York City in a small town called Cooperstown.

I did find the hoarder of all antique stores in a huge, gigantic old four story barn.  It was overwhelming and impossible to see everything he had.  I have never seen anything like it.  It is a dream to any antique shoppers.  Unfortunately, the things I wanted were much to big to put in my suitcase and prices were on the high end.  Talk about trash to treasure......he had more stuff than anyone should ever have. 

I was lucky enough to have some great food in NYC and one of my highlights was to stop at Carlos Bakery in Hoboken New Jersey, (Cake Boss) and try some of his delicious pastries, red velvet cupcake, chocolate cupcake and a delicious Cannoli Cake.  Worth every penny!

The pizza is sick (that means good) in NYC and we had the world's largest slice.  So fun.

It will take me a couple days to get caught up and upload all of our pictures, but I just wanted to say Hello and that I have missed blogging.

Have a great day!

Baby bird update

Our babies are growing by leaps and bounds.  They barely fit in the nest now.  I know they look like a jumbled mess of feathers and I'm not even sure I can figure out exactly what is what, but here they are.  That is three babies in there and it's cold here today so we want to hurry so mom can come back and keep them warm.

Monday, May 23rd



My 100th Follower

In honor of my 100th follower, I would first like to say Thank You to all of you.  Blogging has become a love of mine and I am so glad that I have met so many great people with creative, talented, extraordinary skills.  I love all of the recipes, decorating, crafts and inspirational ideas I see daily.  It helps make our house more of a home each day. 

I would like to thank Debbie at Refresh Restyle for being my 100th follower.  She has a beautiful blog and a very cute dog named Murphy who has a lot to say in his own awesome posts.  Here are just a couple of posts from Debbie.  Please go to her blog and follow along with her.  She has so many inspiring pictures and a fantastic decorating style and an eye for beautiful things.  

Bird Nest Update

Well, we couldn't resist not peeking into our little nests, so when the bird flew away for a minute, my husband got on top of the patio cover and took a couple pictures.  We have two nests.  One above each outdoor fan.  Here is a picture of our little stay at home mom and her little nest.  She sits on it all day and all night.  Look at these beautiful little eggs.

Now the second nest (if you can call it that), looks complete from below, but when my husband looked into that one......here is what we found. 



Want my explanation?  I think it got confused which nest the other eggs were in, and she needed to lay that egg fast and just plopped it out right on the wood beam.  We laughed our heads off.  The sad thing is, she has abandoned this egg all together.  She never sits on that side so I'm afraid that egg won't ever hatch.  It still makes me laugh to look at that nest though.

Happy Spring and have a great Mother's Day everyone!

We have a house guest

I know, I know, I posted this the other day, but it really is fun to watch.  In just 4 days our little guest bird has made the nest.  Back and forth, back and forth, twig after twig one at a time.  It is so intertwined I don't know how they do it.   They tweet all day, I might have to record it - it is so loud.   I can't wait to retreive that beautiful nest for my house.  I have big plans for it.

Day 4

Some of lifes greatest treasures - are the simple pleasures we enjoy!