My mother in law, or “Gigi,” recently ordered four 16×24 canvases for herself after seeing the ones I have hanging in my living room (you remember those, right?).  Well, her canvases arrived this weekend and she had originally planned on hanging them in her bedroom.  My father in law, though, changed his mind and said they were too beautiful to hide away in their room.  They needed to be out in the living room for everyone to see instead.  He was right.  They look just awesome on her walls!  Nice choices Gigi!  And thanks for another great set of canvases Pixel2Canvas team!  These are the 16×24 canvases on a 3/4 inch stretcher frame – they come ready to hang!  Easy peezey lemon squeezy!

This is one of my many sisters-in-law, Robin, displaying her winnings as the skee ball champ against Mom at Chuckie Cheese’s this afternoon.  Mom, or Gigi as the girls call her, invited us to come to a lunch date while she watched two of my lovely nieces, Mackinzie & Delaney.  They come down every Monday for some Gigi time & we like to get the cousins together for some cousin time too.  We all got a ton of tokens, thanks to Gigi, & it was personally my goal to acquire as many tickets as possible…cuz that’s how I roll.  Brooke kinda slowed me down, but I’d say we cleaned up pretty decently in the end.

Mom is a pretty darn good skee ball player and challenged Robin to beat her.  (My personal best score was 20,000)  Mom got 23,000 and was ecstatic….until…Robin came back with 25,000!  Ouch!  So, I made Robin climb up on the skee ball lanes & show me her victory face.  But wait!  That’s not all!  As we were turning in our tickets I found a stray coin in my pocket & gave it to mom, telling her she should redeem herself in skee ball.  She quickly ran over & smacked down Robin’s score with a new high of 28,000 – VICTORY!  I told her to get up on the lanes too, but she politely declined…I wonder why?

Thanks for the great lunch date girls.  We had a blast!

Photos I’m looking at:  Perfectly Posh Photography by Nicole Benitez.  Nicole was another participant in Justin & Mary‘s Spread the Love Tour in DC whose business card I snagged (super cute, BTW).  I’ve looked her up, followed her on Twitter & become her Facebook Fan so I could check out her work.  I totally love her fresh, colorful look.  Her style matches her personality – chic, urban, couture!  And, to boot, she’s a mom…of five!  Wow!  If she can do this photo biz thing with 5 kiddos, I think I can probably make mine work too!  Thanks for the inspiration, Nicole!  Hope we run in to one another sometime again.

So when I married my wonderful husband Josh, I had didn’t realize I was marrying into such a creative, talented family.  It’s a lot of competition, I must say!  My husband, Josh, is really skilled at all things Mac, programming, and the techincal side of music.  His dad is a great CPA, and his mom, Bonnie, has been creating and crafting ever since I’ve known her.  Recently, (in the last 7 years) she has made quite a following for herself on eBay selling all kinds of things.  She started painting sweet, shabby chic flowers on vintage and antique items, and has recently moved on to creating Shrink Plastic & resin earrings.  Occasionally, when I have time, she asks me to snap some photos of her stuff.  I usually try to do this during my littlest girl’s nap time because my girls just go “ga-ga” over “Gigi’s” jewelry.  So, in the interest of trying to blog more faithfully, and sharing my life with you all, I had to share with you some super cute stuff that my mother in law is making these days.  Here are some items from her shop, Fun Jewelry:

I know I’ve posted about a gazillion Christmas cards, but I couldn’t resist putting Mackinzie in one once I’d edited these four photos of her. She was just too precious! This is for mommy Laura, daddy Bert, & Gigi & Pop Pop while you wait for the rest of them to be finished!