So, we're in the market for a new bed (and if I have my way, a new bedroom set) for Snuggle Bug. In specific, I want a twin bed with a trundle so that his little friends have a place to sleep when he starts doing sleepovers. I'm not sure I'm comfortable with the idea of bunk beds yet, although I know he'd be thrilled.  He's only 4 1/2 years old.  I'd worry about him falling off in the midst of climbing up the ladder.

I've done research online and I must say I'm a bit shocked at the prices! Oronzo seems to think he's going to walk into a furniture store and walk out with a bed for $200. I told him that I seriously doubt he'll get anything of any quality for $200 (I don't want a metal frame for a bed)...and that's not even considering the additional cost of the mattress.

Here's a set I kind of like. Want to guess the price?



This white bed & trundle is $448 + S/H.

Labels: home, kids furniture, Snuggle Bug

We're getting price quotes for a cleaning service to come in and do the heavy cleaning of our house twice a month. With both of us working outside of the home at the moment, it's getting to be too much and our house is suffering. I'm tired of it! It's time to take action and I'm not talking Flylady kind of action!

So I'm curious, how much would you pay for housekeeping service? Do you hire someone now?

Labels: clean that house, family, home

A dear blogger friend of mine, Kathleen Marie at The Open Window, has come up with a neat "Welcome to My Neighborhood", where she's inviting us all to share our favorite things about our neighborhood (perhaps our favorite local hangout or attraction) using photos, stories, and/or slide shows.

I'm in Las Vegas on business right now and I didn't plan ahead by taking pictures of my neighborhood before I left, so you'll have to let me paint you a picture with words. I do have pictures of Snuggle Bug that I can use to help support my story.

Oronzo and I purchased our 4 BR, brick home approximately 2 years ago. It's in a quite, well-kept little neighborhood.

This is the first home that I've ever owned. I've spent most of my adult life moving from city to city for work and, as a result, renting.

Buying this home has allowed me to finally but down roots. It's allowed Oronzo and I to create a safe and loving haven for the raising of our children.

Our home is filled with laughter, love, and the smells of baked goodies! We open our home to friends and family often.

Being from a small town, I craved to know my neighbors so over these past 2 years I've worked hard to find opportunities to interact with those that live around us.

When we moved in and got settled, Oronzo, Snuggle Bug, and I walked from house to house to knock on doors and introduce ourselves to everyone on our street. I even went so far as to make a neighborhood chart and pass it out to all the neighbors so that we could all know each other.

On Valentine's Day Snuggle Bug and I went up and down our street and delivered cookies that we had baked the night before.

We've gotten to know many of our neighbors quite well. Our morning walks result in invitations to come in to neighbors houses for a visit. When out taking care of their yards, our neighbors will stop for chats. When we go out of town, we have neighbors that are happy to look after our house for us.

And at Halloween, Snuggle Bug rakes in the loot because our neighbors know him and they like to give him handfuls of candy at each stop!

Not far outside of our neighborhood is our church. After joining, we learned that Oronzo's parents were members of our church when they were newly married. We love our church! Although large, it's warm, inviting, and very beautiful. The parishioners are friendly and the priests are fantastic! Snuggle Bug was baptized in our church and, as long as we stay put, will celebrate his First Communion and Confirmation here too. When he's a bit older, I intend for Snuggle Bug and I to join the family choir! I love being a part of a spriritual family such as this one.

A few blocks from our church is our favorite local French cafe. We eat breakfast there every Sunday and we've gotten to know the owner and wait staff quite well. The food is delicious, the cafe is bright and cheerful, the walls are covered with the artwork of local artist. It's a bustling cafe and Snuggle Bug loves how he's given crayons and paper immediately upon being seated. We love this place!

We love supporting local owners whenever we can!

We have several parks near our neighborhood. Snuggle Bug's favorite park is the one that has ducks. We take him there frequently so that he can feed the ducks a loaf of bread. One piece of bread for the ducks, one for Snuggle Bug. That's how it works.

The parks in our area host many activities. Each Spring and Fall we attend outdoor pops concerts where we pack a picnic dinner and a blanket and we go and enjoy music under the stars!

The parks also have frequent festivals, games, and many other family-fun activities. Since we live a few blocks from several close friends, we schedule park play-dates quite frequently.

We're fortunate to have several bookstores within our neighborhood. One is just 2 blocks away. It's a little hole-in-the-wall used bookstore that has row upon row of floor-to-ceiling bookshelves crammed full with books. Poking around this maze of books is one of my favorite past times! I love the smell of all those books!

We also have a Barnes & Noble bookstore close by and Snuggle Bug enjoys their Kids Corner where they hold toddler story times several times throughout the week.

He also enjoys the Thomas the Tank train table that is in the children's area. Even though he has his own train set at home, he still makes a bee-line to the Barnes & Noble train set each time we visit.

Not only do we have a lot of bookstores in our neighborhood, but we also have a great library branch very close by and several others within driving distance. Our local library is fabulous! We've been taking Snuggle Bug to library story-times since he was an infant. At the library closest to us, Snuggle Bug has gotten quite attached to some of the librarians, especially the story time coordinator, Chris. Whenever he sees Chris, he drops everything and rushes right to her to give her a hug!

A while back, the main library in town organized a Story Town event where story book characters came out to play and local authors read their books aloud while older children acted out the story in costume. Each child was given a free book upon entrance into Story Town. Snuggle Bug loved this!

Although we love supporting local owners when we can, I must admit that we frequent a nearby Starbucks. They're only a mile from our house so we like to walk to Starbucks so that I can induldge in a tall hot chocolate with whipped cream and Snuggle Bug can have a piece of his favorite cinnamon swirl coffee cake.

I'm afraid we've created a Starbucks addiction in our son. A couple of weekends back we were visiting Oronzo's parents and they took us to have a picnic up in the mountains near their home. Aleiza, Oronzoz's mom, asked Snuggle Bug, "Do you want to go for a walk with Grandma?" Snuggle Bug's response was, "Get stroller, go Starbucks?" After indulging in a hearty laugh, we gently explained to Snuggle Bug that there was no Starbucks on the mountain, or even in the town where Oronzo's parents live.

Just a few blocks from our house we have a locally owned butcher shop! It sells the best sausages, steak, and other meats. It also has delicious deli sandwiches on the softest sub rolls. My mouth is watering just thinking of these. Walking down to the butcher shop to get sausages and chat with the butchers while we eat our deli sandwiches is one of our favorite Saturday activities!

Well, there you have it, a glimpse in to our little neighborhood that we love so much! I hope you've enjoyed my tour.

Now, I'm off to check out the other participates' posts for Kathleen Marie's Welcome to My Neighborhood event! I hope you've decided to participate so I can get a peek of your neighborhood! :)

Labels: family, home, Oronzo, photos, Snuggle Bug

Well, I never did pictures posted yesterday, as planned. I thought I'd have time to post some at work, but our Internet was down all day, so that didn't happen. When I got home, I was busy right up until it was time to catch some Zss.

Here are pictures of Snuggle Bug getting ready to deliver Valentine's Day cookies to our neighbors. It started sprinkling rain just as we were heading out. Luckily, the drizzle subsided fairly quickly! It took us a fair amount of time to deliver 21 packets of cookies, even with declining our neighbor's gracious offers to come inside to get warm. Everyone was tickled pink with their surprise delivery! I think Snuggle Bug enjoyed himself and so did I!

After all the hard work Snuggle Bug did delivering cookies, he deserved a treat of his own! He was quite happy with his Valentine's Day gift.

And if you're wondering how Oronzo made out this Valentine's Day, well, trust me, he was taken care of.

Oronzo got his own packet of cookies, a nice Italian dinner, and at the end of the day, he got a massage and some special attention in our bedroom filled with candles.

All-in-all, our day was hectic but spectacular, how about yours?!

P.S. I'll try to visit your blogs later today. I just didn't get to anyone's yesterday at all.

Labels: baked goodies, celebration, family, holiday, home, Oronzo, Snuggle Bug, toddler

BooMama is hosting a Christmas Tour of homes and, since Christmas is my favorite holiday of the year, I thought I'd join in on the fun. You're about to see pictures of our various Christmas decorations.

BooMama mentioned providing refreshments. Well, I can't decide on any one refreshment to offer you. Would you settle for a link to my Holiday Cooking, Blogger Style recipe exchange where you'll find 200+ recipes that 80 bloggers contributed?

Okay, now for our Christmas decorations!

Let's start with our tree. It's a humble little tree, but we love it. We've made no effort to get a larger tree. This one suite us just fine.

Our tree during the daytime. We put it in the living room, in front of the bay window.



Our tree at night. My puny digital camera just didn't do a great job of capturing the lights on the tree. Sorry for the blurriness of the image.

I think the most enjoyable part of putting up our Christmas tree is hanging on our ornaments that we've collected over the years. Both Oronzo and I have ornaments dating from our childhood, up to 2005. I'm waiting to see what ornament Oronzo will get me this year.



This ornament is very special. It was given to Snuggle Bug by his birth grandmother, Clara, the day he was born, in preparation for his first Christmas. This is his very first ornament ever.



This ornament was given to us last year by one of our neighbors. We'd only been in our new home for 3 months by the time Christmas had arrived and we were so touched by the thoughtful welcome gifts from many of our neighbors. We love our neighborhood!



This ornament was made for me by my mom a few years back. She made each of us kids a set of about 6 ornaments. I love each of them!



This is my Fontanini nativity set. I've been collecting pieces of this set since I graduated from college. I love it because, not only is it beautiful, but it's hard to break.



This is Snuggle Bug's Little People nativity set. I put it out in the open for him so that it's easily accessible when he wants to play with it. You may have noticed that in both of my nativity sets, baby Jesus is not present. Our Catholic tradition is to wait until Christmas morning to add baby Jesus to the nativity scene.


This is my favorite children's Christmas book. It's a Little Golden book. I used to have a copy of this as a child but it was lost over the years. I made a point to buy another copy for Snuggle Bug. The illustrations in this book are beautiful!


And this helps remind me how many days until Christmas, which is good because I still have a few days to finish up Christmas shopping!

Well, there you have it, some of my Christmas favorites. I hope you've enjoyed my little tour! Now, I'm off to go see the many other holiday decorated homes of my fellow bloggers.

Thanks, BooMama, for hosting the 2006 Christmas Tour of Homes! :)

Labels: blogger friends, books/reading, BooMama, celebration, faith, family, holiday, home, memories, photos, traditions

Oronzo, Snuggle Bug, and I are flying to my home state early tomorrow morning, to celebrate Thanksgiving with my side of the family! We'll be there for a whole week.

I'm not lining up guest bloggers for this trip because I'm staying with my brother, Cole, and his family and we'll have Internet access, so I'll be able to continue to blog next week. Hooray!

I'm really excited to be going home. I'll be able to hang out with my entire family, as well as some aunts and uncles. I may even have time to visit with some of my college friends while I'm back.

Snuggle Bug will be able to play with his 6 cousins while we're back and his aunts and uncles and grandparents will be able to love on him! Most haven't seen him since last Christmas.

My family has requested two things of Oronzo. First, they want him to make a big pot of his scrumptious Italian marinara sauce. Next, they want him to take professional pictures of each of my family members. These will probably be used as Christmas pictures this year. Oronzo is lugging home some of his camera equipment through the airport. I'm insisting that the 3 of us have our pictures taken as well. Despite the fact that Oronzo is a professional photographer, it's rare that I get a nice picture of the 3 of us.

I wish it weren't so expensive to fly back home. This trip is costing us approximately $660 in airfare alone. After Snuggle Bug turns 2 in late December, it'll cost even more than that because he will no longer be able to travel for free. Yikes! I'm hoping to convince my family to come my way next year for Christmas. We'll see how that goes.

Stay tuned this week for details on how our trip is going. I'm sure we'll have lots of fun!

Labels: celebration, family, holiday, home, Oronzo, Snuggle Bug, vacation