What's in the Name Challenge

Hello friends! 

I'm so excited for this post today.  This is part of a challenge hosted by my new friend over at My Colonial Home.  The challenge is to basically give you a little history as to where you blog name came from. 

Well D Family Values started a little over a year and a half ago on January 14, 2011.  To be honest, the blog existed long before the name...

When I first started this blog it was a new year and I had only been married a couple of months.  I had moved away from my family and everything I had ever known in Ohio to come up to Vermont and live in the mountains with my hubby.  It was all exciting, new, and EXTREMELY TERRIFYING to move my entire life.  So many new things were happening at once, newly graduated college, new career, new state, new husband, and my very first home.  Overwhelmed, I turned to blogs and hearing from other people all around about their trials, challenges, and day to day life.  I thought, what a perfect place to share all of these new experiences than the blogging world! 

I was so eager to start that I created an account without any idea on a blog name, what my first post would be, or even what all I would blog about.  Reading other blogs I saw some pretty niftly names and wanted something eye catching as well.  Without having any other plan, I settled on the title of "A Crazy Little Thing Called Life".  I wrote my first post and then....didn't see blogger for an entire year!  What happened?  I didn't know what in the world to write about.  I had so many ideas, my new life in Vermont, my faith, ghost hunting, or being newly married.  I couldn't settle on any one idea.   So I just decided to stop before I really got started and continued to visit blogs and be a lurker. 

FINALLY, one day I was reading a long favorite blog of mine Mabel's House.  She started her blog to focus around decorating and fixing up her first new home she bought with her husband.  But as I was reading her posts, they were not all just about her home.  She brought in her favorite books, family (including her beautiful baby girl), funny stories, and even talked about other trials and tribulations she had experienced.  A lightbulb popped up in my head and I realized, I don't need to focus on one topic.  It's my blog and there's so much I want to talk about and if nobody reads...NO BIG DEAL!

I went back to my blog and started writing my first post since I started this blog.  I thought about deleting the account and starting from scratch but decided...I want to see my first post and remember where I started from.  I knew I would have a lot to talk about regarding my family and new baby boy and that most of my posts would focus on them.  Since our last name is DeMasi, that's where the D came into play.  I am constantly learning new things about life and who I am and what I value.  Besides my family, I value decorating and creativity focused mostly on prim :) , ghost hunting, my faith, and all of the little things that pop up in life that you just want to share.  I honestly didn't know what would be in my blog and decided that I liked it that way.  So since Family is the focus of my blogs , that's where that came into play.  And since I want to share any and everything my family and I Value, it just fit.  Plus I like the slight play on words with the D hehe!  I'm still learning about blogging and I still don't get to post as much as I like.  But it sure is nice to have a safe place to share a small part of my life and get a peek at some other wonderful people and their lives and passions!

So there you go a long post not only about where my blog name came from but also my journey into the blog world.

These Past 3 1/2 Weeks...Recap

Woah it's been a while since I made a post!

What has D family been up to these past almost 4 weeks?  Well......a lot of CRAZINESS...let me explain....

When I decided it was time for AnDy and I to start a family and for me to be a mom, I had this idea of being a mom as being something like this...

Reading a nice book to my kid and relaxing having everything be nice calm and normal.

Turns out that lately everything has been completely chaotic with me looking more like this...

or this...

Crazy thing seems to happen (to me anyways) after having a baby.  My hormones get all crazy and I turn into a nutball!  Neurotic, hypochondriac, nervious wreck, and the world's biggest worry wart.  I have been feeling the complete opposite of sane lately and like I've been hanging on to sanity by a string of thread.  Luckily, I've been in the process of getting my hormones in balance and hopefully my sanity along with it (Well at least the little bit of sanity I may have previously had :)). 

Besides my craziness, little things have been going on.

I decided to move all of my Americana decor over to my kitchen from my dining room.  The dining room ends up being the coldest room in the house once winter happens, and in the summer we are outside more when we are home.  I wanted to be able to enjoy all of my Americana stuff more.  Maybe I will eventually change things again, but for now it suits. 

Here's one before picture:

You can see more before pics here.

Here are some after pics:

I still have work to do in there, like change the tops of the cabinets and some other small changes.  But so far I'm liking the change. 

This summer D family has also been watching our favorite summer show, Big Brother.  Here is a peek at 2 of my favorite players.

Dan Gheeslinga...AND...

Ian Terry.  I must mention that I love his shirt!  He's a chemical engineering student and with that being my degree, this shirt, and the fact he wore it on tv, just makes me chuckle.

We've also been getting rid of some junk with a yard sale.  It feels so good to get rid of the unnecessary clutter!  AnDy and I have given each other an early anniversary gift...2 tickets to a Halloween party hosted at the Spalding Inn by some of our favorite tv personalities, Jason and Grant from Ghost Hunters.  We cannot be anymore excited than we are about this.  We haven't seen then in a couple years and with Grant leaving the show and not doing anymore events, this is a chance to see him outside of those.  CAN'T WAIT!!!

I've been working on Noah's first birthday party.  We just got his birthday gift in the mail, a jumpoline which will be turned into a ball pit.  I am SUPER excited to put this up; I know he's going to LOVE it!  Oh...speaking of Mr. Noah himself.  He's been busy getting bigger and getting excited for his birthday party.  He still has yet to crawl.  I think he may skip crawling and will jump straight to walking.  Although he's a bit of a ways away from walking too.  He just likes to do things at his own pace I guess.  He has, however developed a love for Sesame Street and the characters Big Bird, Elmo, and Cookie Monster.  He even got a new tub that has his favorite characters on it.

He's also developing quite the personality.  He's definitely not as shy as mommy was when she was younger.  And here's Mr. Attitude himself......

So there's my up to date history of the past 3 1/2 weeks. 

I hope everyone has a great rest of their Labor Day and week!

D Family Photo Shoot - Celebrating Noah's 1st Year

Recently D family had a photo shoot done.  We had some family pictures taken but this was mostly a shoot for Noah.  I guess you can say it was his 1yr photo shoot but because we wanted pictures taken for his birthday invitations and needed them to be done soon, it's more like his 10 1/2 month photo shoot.  He did such a good job!  He's like his daddy and is a big Ham when it comes to cameras.  I decided to post some of my favorites from the shoot.

I LOVE this one of my boys! :)

The next 2 give baby D's 1st birthday party theme away.  We chose little monsters.  This was just a little monsters outfit we chose to have pictures taken in for his birthday invitation.  I had a personalized outfit made for his actual party.  I will have a picture of him in that taken at his party for his thank you cards.

These next pictures are some of my absolute favorites!



Boothbay Harbor Maine

Hello all!  I'm slowly getting back into things, like blogging.  I've been putting a majority of my focus on Noah and AnDy and just enjoying QT with my family.  Trying to relax a bit and enjoy the rest of the summer and planning baby D's 1st birthday.  My baby is slowly moving on and will eventually not be a baby anymore :(.  That's ok though because I have been enjoying every stage so far and I'm sure I'll enjoy more to come. 
Anyhow...as part of the relaxing and enjoying family time, D family took an extended weekend trip to Boothbay Harbor Maine.  I was so excited because I've always wanted to see Maine, lighthouses and other historical places. 
Beware, lots of pics ahead :)

Baby D was excited for the trip!

The Harbor.  What is it about a harbor with boats and the ocean that automatically relaxes me?  So peaceful!

He loved the boats.  Getting him to look towards the camera was an extremely difficult task because he couldn't take his eyes off of them.

We stopped and toured Fort William Henry on Pemaquid Beach, Maine. 

This is pretty much what's left of the fort.  Most of it was burned down and I can't remember when or details.  The picture below shows a view from the top of the tower.  You can see part of the outline of where the fort was along with remnants of the captains quarters.

RAWR!

We also stopped at Pemaquid lighthouse.  This is the same lighthouse shown on the back of Maine's state quarter.  I was super uper excited to finally see a lighthouse and go to the top.

Views from the top.  It was so cramped up there and we could only have 5 people max at the top.  I don't know why I always envisioned more space at the top of lighthouses.  Either way it was super cool!

And of course what is a trip to one of the oldest states in our country without at least a tour of spooky haunted places around Boothbay?  The lady in the red cape gave a tour of supposed haunted spots.  Besides the explanation which was given saying orbs were anything supernatural or paranormal instead of dust or bugs and cool lighting effects, it was an good family tour.  It definitely gave me extreme craving for a ghost hunt.  It's been too long and it looks like it might not be in the plans until October (mine and AnDy's anniversary) when we stay at the Lizzy Borden House.  We would be the type to plan on an anniversary ghost hunting trip! 

All in all it was a very relaxing and much needed trip.  Seeing all of the old buildings and antiques gave me a renewed boost to do some crafty things.  I'm thinking I may redo my end tables (FINALLY) since I've been wanting to do them since I bought them off of craigslist.

Well that's about it.  Enjoy your Friday and weekend everyone!