I'm a Happy Mom today too!

This is my third week participating in Leigh vs. Laundry's Happiness Challenge (her 15th) and I look forward to it each week. It forces me to realize how many little things make me happy, and that despite my grumpy attitude some days, I really AM happy.

Today, I got the first pedicure of the summer season! It was very relaxing despite the fact my kids were there (playing with my pedicurist's kids....they had a blast!) and so nice to finally get my toes painted!!

The color is OPI "Plugged-In Plum" I LOVE IT!

So- pretty toes make me happy!

Go on over to Leigh's and check out what makes other bloggers happy!

I'm crafty too, well sometimes.

Sometimes is probably an overstatement. Maybe I should have said  "I think I can be crafty, then I never follow through." That is more truthful. Anyway, I finally decided to finish a project I had collected the needed items for, but hadn't really started.

I found this at Pier 1 and just KNEW I could make it myself.

So, I found an expensive wall frame ("as-is" from Michael's custom frame department) dug through my craft stuff (I've got a lot, even though I rarely make something) and found my $1 Target ball of twine, dusted off some old clothes pins and grabbed my handy dandy staple gun to get started!

This was so easy to make! I flipped over the frame and got to work!

I just started by stapling one end of the twine to the frame, and stretching it to the other side (as straight as I could get it...I'm NOT a perfectionist when I want to get things done quickly) and stapled the other end, trimming it so it couldn't be seen on the other side. (As you can see, I didn't measure so the twine was equal distance apart...I wanted it to be a little uneven, so different sizes of art work would fit, that and as I said before, I can get lazy when I want to work fast).

I clipped the clothes pins to the twine along with some of my kids paintings, and hung it up! (This is not where I want it in my home, I just hung it there to show it off to you)

Of course you can find a cheap frame, paint it and glaze it and make it your own, AND you can go the extra step to paint the clothes pins the color YOU like, but I like mine this way...it is going in the basement and the black frame matches perfectly, and the plain clothes pins give a little lighter touch to the room.

I'm linking this to Shanty 2 Chic's I Made It Without My Hubby party, since, I did everything without his help! (Yeah, it's a pretty simple project, but I'm proud of myself for finally getting it done!)

UPDATE: OK, so I wrote this post in anticipation of I Made It Without My Hubby, and now a few adjustments have been made. The clothes pins and artwork ended up being too heavy for just stapled twine, and a few of the twine lines fell off! So I just added a dab of hot glue to each of  the staples/twine ends on one side of the frame, let it dry, then pulled the other end as tight as I could and glued that side too. So far, that fixed it!

I'm a photographer remembering to actually take pictures.

I had a hard time deciding which photo was my BEST photo this week for Beth's You Capture Challenge. I really think my best two were 1) a sky one I posted last week and 2) a pic of my son and his teacher. But I didn't get permission from his teacher to post the pic so I had to go with my third best pic of the week.  Hope you enjoy! Oh and PS I don't know if I've said this, but all of my pics are SOOC shots. I don't have any photo editing software, so I'm pretty proud of some of the what I think to be, cool pics I take. (notice I said some) And I guess I'd better take the time to say that I normally use the auto setting on my camera, but sometimes I use the "no flash" setting (well, that's what I call it.)

I'm happy AGAIN this week!

Can you believe it? I have ANOTHER picture that makes me happy. Two weeks in a row! Hopefully I can keep it up.

A big ole pan of Brownies

Well, it isn't just the brownies that made me happy. It was the time I spent with friends eating them, and other yummy food and drinking cocktails. It was supposed to be a girls movie night, but turned into food and conversation. (Which is OK with me!) I took a few other pics (Holly holding a bottle of booze) but this was the best one.

Go over to Leigh's and see the other things that make people happy. (Oh and sorry for linking so late in the day...I had a crazy morning!)