Attempting to Decorate

i was so excited to move into a house with a fireplace/mantle but i'm always stressing about how to decorate it. and i can't put nails in the wall above it (we have plaster walls and they really suck right there) so i've only got a few that were already there to work with. i want some kind of fake animal mount to go up there, maybe a big white glass deer or something...but here is my "spring" look for the mantle! i'm almost pleased with it.



i love that handmade sock monkey.

did i ever post this? crystal brought it back to me from mexico. it's so perfect!

i can't decide if i want to paint those deer candle holders.

i want to put real flowers up there, but the cats would eat them and knock everything over.

like the painting i did in high school? i think it's called "self portrait with dog." haha.

Huntsville Trip: Post 3: The Rest

after the museum we went outside to do the rides. they were included in admission which was agreat. travis was scared to ride the space shot for some reason. it was awesome! we expected it to take us up really slow and then drop us like most of those rides but it just shots you up super fast! totally surprised us!




it was such a beautiful day. my first day being outside for more than 30 minutes in a long time.

since we had buy one get one free coupons we decided to splurge and go to the imax movie. it wasnt 3D, it was one of those awesome dome screens. this is us in the lobby. it was about the hubble space telescope and it tototally blew my mind grapes! i never really think about space at all, and it is just so freaking amazing and scary! so glad we did the imax.



too bad the gift shop sucked. and i love crappy gift shop stuff. they didn't even have astronaut ice cream in the big main shop! so stupid. not even a decent magnet for us to add to our collection.




then we checked out space camp. it looks so fun! also very expensive. marc was talking about sending jamison for a week. but it's almost a thousand dollars!



rock climbing race. of course. crystal and i couldn't climb because we had on dresses.

good form marc. hahah. we also went on a simulator ride. it was so stupid. roller coaster on mars? something about country music? do you want a mars burger? we left confused and feeling sick.

we got dippin' dots! the ice cream of the future. and apparently travis was looking down my dress. hahaha.

space shuttle park.

we are so in love.

so are our husbands. i'm glad they've become bffs too. they are going on a camping trip soon.

the boys ride the gravitron one more time. we didn't because we would puke.

goodbye rockets!

FINALLY got some at the tiny gift shop by the door. yes!
had to make one last stop at miss baker's grave!

first monkey in space to come back alive. poor space dogs that didn't.

we tried to find some thrift stores to go to on the way home. but everything was closed! we did see this cute sign:

we found one tiny store. crystal got a cute dress for 4 dollars.
we were going to crystal's mom's house for dinner. i put the wrong city in my gps so we went way out of our way on some small back roads. but it was fun.






we ate dinner with her family. it was so good. fried fish and homemade hush puppies. what a lovely day we had. perfect pre valentines bff date.

Huntsville Trip: Post 2: The Museum

once we got there we had to do fun make up! the boys were less than thrilled, until we pointed out the SR-71 in the parking lot, so they ran over there to wait on us.

huge rocket out front that i couldn't get into one picture. so cute!

flying machine at the entrance to the museum. 

we thought it seemed really crazy that it was so crowded at 9:30 on a sunday morning. 

but then, all these people dissapeared and we felt like we had the place to ourselves the rest of the day. 

travis and marc were really excited! they were reading every single sign.

we were mostly looking at things and saying "cuteeeeee!!!!! space boots!"

look at those cute name badges! i wish i had one like that for work. 

this was a thing that measured how many of you it would take to lift a rocket into space with just your strength. the answer was something like 39,000.

i fit in kind of perfectly.

moon gloves! not as hard to maneuver as you expect.



crystal said "wow, this is actually cool. it was on the moon!" then marc told us it wasn't, it was just in space. still cool.


molds of some famous astronaut hands. they get custom gloves.

woah! how come i never knew moon globes existed? i need one!




super cute airstream that was a confinement space for astronauts when they got back from space.
this dot pattern paper confused both of our cameras so much. neither of them could focus when confronted with it.