Art With A Splash

Over the weekend, Rachel & I attended a class at Art With A Splash and had a BLAST. 

About a month ago, while on the hunt for the perfect birthday gift for my bestie, I found this place by going to Google and typing in "paint and sip [insert your city here]" and saw that there was a local studio offering a class that shows you how to paint Starry Night by Van Gogh. This has always been Rachel's favorite painting so I knew I had to sign us up! We had to wait almost 3 weeks between the time I gave her her gift (which was a bottle of wine, a picture of Starry Night, and a paint brush) to go, and the wait was awful! We were SO ready to go on Friday night!

I was a little nervous because I have zero painting experience. I think the last time I picked up a paint brush was to show Aubrey how to paint in her watercolor book. And to maybe draw a stick figure or two. Pathetic, I know.

To get the feel of the brushes, they had us practice with a dry one.

So far, so good!

I am super proud of our paintings!

Teachers pets, front and center!

If you've been thinking about doing one of these classes, I would absolutely recommend it. It's the perfect night out for girlfriends, couples, and this studio even offers classes for kids that I will definitely be taking the girls to when they get older (with no wine, of course)! I'm amazed that I painted that and I can't wait to display it in our home! 

Also, I wanted to show off the awesome birthday gift that Rachel made for me. "Our" show is Grey's Anatomy. We are Cristina and Meredith to a T. There are some amazing quotes that come out of this show, and we have adopted this one as our own:

Along with some k-cups and a new book, this was the perfect gift for me! 

Our trip to Maine!

Sometimes, you just need a break from the city life. When that feeling strikes us, we take a few days off of work, pack our bags, and head 4 hours north to my mother in law's house. She lives about 3 hours north into Maine so she is literally in the middle of nowhere. The perfect place for a getaway!

We left on Thursday morning (the 16th, which was my birthday) and naturally had to stop for some caffeine before we hit the highway. A very sweet friend of mine sent me an e-gift card to Starbucks for my birthday!

The girls did great on the car ride and we had fun listening to the playlist that I made for our trip (I'll make another post about that later). 

We got to his mom's house and hung out for a few hours and then decided to go grab some seafood for my birthday. I had to be good because I'm in a Biggest Loser competition, so I got broiled scallops and a baked potato. Having a tiny sliver of the cake his mom made me was torture because it was SO yummy.

On Friday, we decided to take Aubrey to the Maine Children's Discovery Museum while Addie stayed at Grandma's house, since there was literally nothing she could have done being so small. I think Aubrey really loved the alone time she got with us.

We spent the rest of our time up there just hanging out and relaxing. Aubrey had a lot of fun playing the Wii, especially Cooking Mama and Mario Kart!

Plans were to leave early Sunday morning, but after getting on the highway and seeing cars flipped over on the highway due to the snow, we decided to turn around and wait the storm out. It would have easily took us 6-7 hours to make it home and we just were not willing to risk our lives (plus, I know my girls and know there is absolutely no way they would sit still for 7 hours! lol) We went back to Keith's mom's house and the girls and I napped while Keith watched some football. We left for good around 8:00 that night and made it home just before midnight. 

We had a great trip, and the five days off of work were definitely needed!

Boston Children's Museum

It's no secret we love the Boston Children's Museum. It had been almost 2 years since the last time we went, so a trip was definitely overdue!

Keith's sister came along for the adventure and we had a blast! We decided to drive into Boston instead of taking the train and it saved so much time and money, plus we didn't have to worry about the train schedule. Winning! 

This crawl maze goes up three floors! She made it about that far before she wanted to come down. Some day we will get to the top!

Addison was getting DOWN with her bad self! I love the intense look in her eyes haha

These blocks gave me SO much anxiety! She kept trying to eat them! Eww

Making a musical instrument!

Of course we have to see the boats before we leave!

I can't wait to take the girls back when Addie is a little bit older and can enjoy more! Do you have any sweet museums where you live? 

2014 Bucket List

My New Years Eve was pretty uneventful. I worked until 1:00 this morning and it was really slow all night, but I got to sit and talk with a couple of friends all night and got some massive pinning done on Addison's first birthday board on Pinterest! I can't believe my littlest lady is going to be 1 in just six short weeks! 

Here are my top 12 things to do in 2014!
1. Lose 30+ pounds. Ahh, isn't losing weight at the top of everyone's list? I'm in a Biggest Loser competition starting this Saturday and going until the end of April so I am SUPER PUMPED to start a healthier lifestyle of eating right and working out. I don't really have a set number on the scale that I want to be at, I just have a vision of what I want to look like and I need to keep going until I get there. I need to start making healthier choices so I can be around and watch my girls grow up, get married, and have babies of their own that I can spoil. See ya later, muffin-top! 

2. Start saving for our DISNEY TRIP! At the end of my New Years Eve post yesterday, I mentioned that we are in the beginning stages of planning our first big trip! I originally wanted to do a big 10-year wedding anniversary trip down there to renew our vows and explore the parks, but honestly, why wait that long?! We will be celebrating our 5 year anniversary next month, so we would only be halfway there. We decided to meet in the middle and celebrate our lucky number 7 year anniversary with the Mouse. Aubrey will be 6.5 and Addison will literally be a week away from 3 (so we can still get her in the park and eating for free! There's a method to my madness, folks!) We want to save enough to be able to do what we want, including some character dining and souvenir shopping (including the bride & groom Mickey ears, hello!). In order to reach this goal we are going to have to save some major dinero, but I know we can make it happen. You guys should see my Disney board on Pinterest. It's private so I don't annoy everyone with my constant pinning. I'm so excited for it that I'm making myself crazy.  

3. Learn to coupon. This kind of goes hand in hand with #2. I spend way too much money on groceries. I saw my local grocery store on an episode of Extreme Couponing so I KNOW it can be done. Lucky for us, we have a ton of cabinet space for my soon-to-be stockpile ;) Look out TLC, here I come! (Okay, so I more than likely will not get that bad. But wouldn't that be nice?)

4. Make my marriage wonderful. If you know me and Keith, you know we have had our struggles. The "D-word" has even been tossed around a couple of times, but we stuck together and I feel like our relationship is getting to be stronger than ever. We learn where to give and take, when to nag and when to bite our tongues. We are celebrating our five year anniversary next month with a trip to Connecticut to hit up one of the big casinos and spend the night at a hotel (but not the same one we went to on our honeymoon. Online it looked nice, but in person it was something out of a horror film. We even pushed the dresser in front of the doora nd brought the crowbar in from the car to ward off any killers. For reals.) I want my girls to grow up in a home filled with love and see a positive example of what a marriage looks like, and we are their biggest influences. 

5. Blog more. Oh, my dear blog. You have been so neglected over the past year. I look back at the lack of posts and am embarrassed. Expect a lot of back-blogging from me in the future. I want the girls to be able to look back and be able to read about stories from when they were little and look at pictures. I'd love to purchase a domain, revamp the look of my blog and make some more blog friends, maybe even attend a Boston Bloggers meet up! 

6. Declutter/Get 100% ORGANIZED. Nothing makes you want to clear out crap like the new year! I have both of my 2014 planners ready to go (one for the kitchen drawer that is so badly disorganized I could barely fit the planner in there), and one to keep on me to keep track of appointments, etc. This should be #1 on the list. We have way too much stuff, guys. And it's just shoved wherever it will fit. I need to haul ass to the store to pick up some bins, and totes, and throw away crap we don't use. My closet is a war zone. My kitchen cabinets are a beautiful disaster. I've pinned my life away on Pinterest with ideas for organization and I will be utilizing it. This also includes my work stuff. Right now I'm using a Wet Seal cloth bag that I got abouttttt 10 years ago and it's so flimsy and all of my things are just thrown in there. Time to get a binder for my documents, a pencil bag for my writing utensils, and some more pretty smelling sanitizer because I just ran out and I in no way need to catch whatever the latest office bug is. Womp womp.

7. Fill picture frames and DECORATE. Can you believe we have been here since March and there is not one single picture hanging up? What the crap is that? I have approximately one million pictures I need to print and I have stacks of frames in my closet ready to be dusted off and hung up. No offense to the random girls living in the "home" picture frame that is right in our entry way, but you've gotta go!

8. Go on more day trips. Up until recently, we shared one car. And if I had to go somewhere during the day, I had to get up early (after working until 1:00am), get the girls ready, and drop Keith off at work. What a pain. I can't wait to take as many trips to the beach as I want this summer! Sunkissed skin and toes in the sand (and chasing the 4 year old through the water and removing sand from the toddler's mouth), I'm coming for you !

9. Make family photo albums. Remember those 1,000,000 pictures I was talking about? The ones that don't get framed need to go into photo albums. And maybe some day I'll be able to pick my scrapbooking hobby back up. We'll see.

10. Run my first 5k. In 2013, there were a few races I almost signed up for, but I got lazy and never trained for them. And I refuse to be the last person over a finish line! Two specific races I want to do this year: Color Run and the Freedom Trail Run (which runs through Boston and visits all of the historic sites - Paul Revere's house, a few burial grounds, and the Old State House to name a few). Rach & I are really excited to do this one!

11. Family photo shoot. I really wanted to do one this fall, but before I knew it, summer was over and there was snow on the ground. This is a big to-do for this year. The girls are getting so big so fast!

12. Actually make some of the DIY I pinned. Enough said.


What's on your 2014 bucket list?