Fast-Free-Fun Christmas project!

I found this cute Christmas Carol Subway Art here. Twenty minutes, some cardstock and a little ribbon I had lying around and this is what I had......
Yeah! I love decorating my home for the holidays. Now I need to go get the tree out of the garage......

Springtime Fun!

I notice every few months that we had some fun family times that I never had the time to blog about. So......I like to do a little seasonal post every now and then.
I can't believe I never posted our Easter pics!

The boys in their handsome Easter suits.

We watched The Lamb of God on Easter Sunday and Caeden really payed attention to the story of Christ's death and resurrection. I love that he's finally old enough to "get it".

Digging in their Easter baskets:My Easter craft: tie-dye eggs. I found the idea here. It was so easy and I loved the end result.

Flying kites for FHE. The boys flew their kites for about 5 min. and then ran off to the playground. Weston loved to watch them though.

My boys can't ever seem to get enough of their grandparents. I loved this picture of all of them crawling over their Papa.

For Memorial weekend we went camping with Nana and Papa. We also brought my niece, Kaylin, along with us. We went to the Scandanavian Festival and parade in Ephraim. Caeden called the marching band "Horners" (because of their trumpets) and the clogging dance troup "Stompers".

Kaylin thought the local royalty were all Princesses and wanted a picture with one of the girls:

This lady was telling the neatest early pioneer stories. We stayed here for probably 40 min. because the kids were so enraptured.

This was the best part:

I made this for a family dinner after Memorial Weekend. I love how it turned out. I got the idea here

I just have to post this. Tanner is such a heavy sleeper and he always ends up in the oddest positions. How can he sleep like this?

Inspection....

We had our final inspection Monday morning and after a few twitches to the electrical panel we passed! When Mike handed me the paper that said "ready for occupancy" I felt like crying. Things have been very intense lately. Mike went a full 48 hrs on only 3 hrs of sleep trying to finish up on time. I was up helping him until the wee hours of the morning several nights in a row as well and it was exhausting. Mother's Day? Did we miss that? Ha. We didn't even have the time to go to church that day. Yep. That's right. We worked all day on Sunday. We really didn't have a choice. We barely got things done in time. Mike didn't go to bed at all Sunday night, he just worked straight through until the next morning (crazy!) The inspector was supposed to come between 9-11am on Monday and by 9am we were not ready! Stressful! Luckily he didn't come until 10:30. As soon as we change the paint (we just sprayed everything white in the interest of saving time), and stain the wood floors I'll post pictures. It's a beautiful room and I'm loving it. I'm so blessed to have such a talented and hard working husband. He's the greatest!

The Call of the Siren

The ancient stories of Greek Mythology tell of the beautiful Sirens. These "women" who were sometimes part animal sang the most beautiful songs imaginable. It was believed that their music was so irrisitable that no sailor was able to pass their island without being drawn by their melodious tunes. These unfortunate victims would meet their death on the rocks below.

The Sirens had it all wrong.

Who needs beautiful, naked, sexy, tempresses with golden voices to lure men it? We have a better way here at our house. I'll tell you the secret.......

Power tools.

Yep. That's right.....power tools.

Every time Mike is working on a project and our house is filled with the grating noises of saws, sanders, nail guns, and routers all the men in the neighborhood flock to our driveway. With all the "action" going on with the addition we're building we've been downright popular. The men across the street come over at least 3-4 times a week just to chat and check on things, the newbies who just moved in next door (that we hadn't seen or heard of the whole two months they lived there) are now friends, men we don't even know have come from around the corner or from down the block.

No need for nudity.

Do we lure them to their deaths? Of course not. That's unproductive. Instead we lure them in and then put them to work. Hey, wonderful neighbors across the street, want to haul off all this wood for your fireplaces? Great! Both of you next door are out of jobs? Hmmm, want some work? You know how to sheetrock? Fantastic! It's unbelievable how much work we've managed to get done by all of these suckers (aka: wonderful, amazing, talented, helpful people).

Now I just need to discover the secret of luring in househelp.

MISSION IMPOSSIBLE:

The original plan:
-Refinance the house for a lower interest rate
-Get on a 15 year loan for only $30 a month more to our payments
-Save loads of money and live happily ever after

The glitch:
- As of 2010 financing has become much more selective
- NO ONE will finance our house with an unfinished addition on the side
- If we back out we loose the $500 we spent for an appraisel AND our low low pre-April-hike interest rate that we're locked into.
- The add-on garage with a master bedroom/bathroom/office up above it is only rough-framed in at this point.

Our Mission:
- Three weeks to finish both the inside and the outside. It has to be up to code and ready for occupation before we can get our financing
- Three weeks to do brick, siding, insullation, the garage door, plumbing, electrical, heating, painting (LOTS of painting), lighting, flooring, bathroom fixtures, drywall, cupboards, shelves, and doors.

We are STRESSED! Mike has taken off work this week and is using his paid vacation to work on the house from about 6:00am until 11:00pm. I can hardly get him inside to eat. He's not sleeping. He's so fixated on all these to-do lists running around in his brain that he wakes up at 3:00am and can't get back to bed. I'm trying to take care of the kids and keep the rest of the household responsibilities going single-handedly (how do sinlge mom's do it???) as well as help him out whenver I'm able. We're trying to hire some of the work out, but finances are limited (especially because it wasn't something we budgeted for) and he's probably going to be taking some upaid leave as well.

The end result:
- Have a wonderful addition to our home that will give us more room and FINALLY more than one working bathroom (hallejuah!) as well as a garage to park the vehicles
- Refinance, get our house paid off sooner, and save tons of money doing it
- Take a vacation.....I'm already planning a weekend away for the two of us when this is all done.
- Live Happily Ever After!

Halloween Crafts!

Today I did something I haven't done in longer than I can remember. I made something! Not anything earth shattering or especially useful. I saw the cutest Halloween craft on this blog.....here. I decided that today I was going to ignore my messy house, my loads of unfolded laundry (my kids, ssshhhh), and all the other things that needed my attention. Today was for ME! It felt great! I love crafting - I love creating - and it's been way too long since I've taken the time to do any of it. Ta da!

My Garden!

I know I'm a complete dork to get so worked up about a garden, but this is the first year I've ever planted a full vegetable garden. Ta-Da!

I'm like a little kid. When I was planting all these itty bitty seeds in the Spring I just kept thinking "there's no way these will actually grow into plants!" There's nothing like planting a garden to help you appreciate the miracles of nature. I had forgotten how good home grown veggies taste!

We have: tomatoes (LOTS of tomatoes) early girl, big boy, and cherry; lettuce, green onions, carrots, zucchini, summer squash and beans. I'm already anticipating what I'm going to plant next year....I want to try potatoes, peas, buttnernut squash, spinach, sweet onions, maybe brussel sprouts.

It's been great for my kids too......they will eat "rabbit carrots" (carrots with the green tops on) all day long in lieu of other treats. I've been also trying my hand at canning this year. My sister-in-law taught me how to do fruit a couple of years ago. So far I've bottled: peaches, apricots, apricot-pinapple jam, peaches, peach jam, pears, and this year I've done plum jam, plum syrup, salsa, and tomatoes. I'm so glad that I've learned how to do it because I enjoy doing it and we love having homegrown fruits and veggies year round. I also like being able to serve up organic, preservative free foods.

Here's our basement. We added a kitchenette. It's (obviously) the kids play room and our family TV room. We still have lots of work to do down here.....replace the carpet, redo the brickwork around the stove, finish the bedroom, storage room, and bathroom. It's coming along though!

We still only have one bathroom...the basement one hasn't been fixed up yet. Right now Mike is adding on a garage with a master bedroom/bathrooom and office above it. Our basement bathroom and extra bedroom are full of flooring, building supplies, moulding, and fixtures for the addition. After that's completed we'll finish up the last part of the basement.

Our hallway was really hard to fix because once we pulled off the old wood panelling there was tons of mold underneath. We also tore down walls in the entry way and kitchen to try and make more of an open space.

You can't tell from this picture, but we removed half of the frontroom wall and created an archway entrance to the kitchen.

This is our backyard, we also have an in-ground trampoline in the middle, but it doesn't show in these pics. This is my first time planting a vegetable garden.....it's been so much fun!!

Before/ After Pictures of our House

This is the kitchen. The second pic was taken at an Easter dinner right after we finished the remodel on the upstairs. Our digital camera wasnt working too well and all the pics we took were fuzzy.

Here's the before and after of our front yard. the yard has really been a challenge for me to fix up because I don't know what I'm doing......I've learned a lot the last coupld of years though!

Deck

Summer is the time for projects!!!

I've never started a blog because being the mother of 3 young boys I don't feel like I have anything of interest to write. My daily thoughts consist of "whats for dinner?" "time to change the laundry" "STOP doing that!" " PB&J again? yuck!"....nothing very profound. I finally decided to start writing because I heard someone describe their blog as their journal. It got me thinking that I need some kind of a record of what goes on in my life. I'm not the writer that my two sisters are, but I've always enjoyed it and it gives me a chance to actually use my brain!

Well, this is the story of my life right now....projects, projects, projects!!! We put in our first vegetable garden this year and it's doing fantastic. Mike is framing a garage & master bedroom/bathroom and study. This last weekend we re-stained our deck and this weekend I get to stain the swingset. It feels like no matter how much we get done there's always more more more to do. On the up side, it's wonderful to see all this progress being made on our house and yard.

This last weekend I was putting on my old painting shirt before we started staining. My first thought when I looked down at it was "I really need to get rid of this old T-shirt". I first got it my senior year of high school 12 years ago. It's an old ugly orchestra T-shirt that we would grudgingly wear when we went on tour. I used to just wear it to bed, but it officially became my "painting T-shirt" after I accidentally splashed some paint on it while doing crafts.

It was the second year we'd been married and we had just bought our first small house. We officially moved in over Thanksgiving weekend. The budget was really tight that Christmas. I wanted to do gifts for a few of my family members, but I needed to keep it inexpensive. I bought some terra-cotta pots, stencils and paint. I painted cheesy little flowerpots that we gave away as Christmas presents. Of course I knew there was a chance of getting paint on my clothes so I went and put on the ugliest shirt I owned. Sure enough by the time I was done painting Ivy on one of the pots I had green drops across the middle of my shirt.

That summer we decided that the 80s paint job in our house needed to be updated. So, we got some beautiful wood chair rail that we painted white and a nice mushroom color to do the walls in. I immediately got on my Paint Shirt to do the job. I still remember the hours we put into that house. The previous owner had used some texture paint and splashed purple, pink, teal, and yellow paint over the walls. We had to sand, mud, prime and then paint. It took weeks to finish. We took so much pride turning that little house into a home. We stripped and painted the old dark brown cupboards white.....then added moulding at the top and antique handles....Poof! Our kitchen looked new! It was beautiful! Sure enough by the time we were done my shirt had beige and white paint marks all over it.

The next time I pulled that old shirt out was when we were expecting our first baby boy. We wanted to paint the nursery blue, but it took us a couple of times to get it just right. The first color we stared out with was too dark, so we sponged on a lighter color.....but now it was too busy, so we kept only the one wall multi-hued and painted the rest neutral with white trim. Finally! We had the perfect nursery for our beautiful baby boy Caeden.

When I was expecting our second boy, Tanner, we started to look at our 1200 sq. foot house and realize that our family was going to grow out of it real quick. I loved our home and it was with mixed feelings that we put it up for sale. Most of the house was looking great by that time, but we'd always put off doing much in the master bedroom. We decided that it would sell better if we made it look more stylish. Mike bought me a much desired new patchwork bedspread and eyelet lace dust ruffle for my birthday that year and I wanted the bedroom to match. On went my Painting Shirt again. We painted the bedroom in two different tones of green. A neighbor friend had taught me how to do a sponging off painting technique to get a nice finish. When our house finally did sell I cried. I was having all kinds of second thoughts about leaving my first home and the good friends in the neighborhood. There were so many memories. I had had Tanner, our second boy, by that time and it was so hard to leave the house that I'd brought two of my precious babies home to.

Mike was determined that if we were going to spend a lot of time and money fixing up a house the way we wanted it that we should just buy one that needed the work in the first place. Oh my goodness! I vowed that I would never never look at the Foreclosed market for a home again. It was such a rollercoaster ride that by the time we found our second home I was just happy to finally be in a place....even though it was a complete dump! We set up a living area that composed of bedrooms/livingroom/kitchen all in the family room in the basement. We lived crammed into that teenie space with all of our stuff in boxes for the next 6 months while we ripped out lighting, plumbing, burned sheet rock (the house had had a fire), appliances, walls, flooring.....we completely gutted the place. When we finally got to the painting stages I was so excited because it finally meant we were nearing an end of communal living and we could function like a normal family again. This time I got- chocolate brown, caramel brown (Mike always claimed I was hungry when I picked out the two colors for our frontroom/kitchen area), sea blue from the boys room, sage green & hunter green in the master bedroom, white, burgandy from the bathroom, and yellow from the family room- paint colors on my shirt. Our home isn't perfect and I'm sure it wouldn't make it in any stylish decorating magazines, but we put so much blood sweat and tears into it that we immediately loved it.

When my younger sister bought her last apartment she called me up and begged for help to paint it. Her walls had previously been painted an outlandish array of colors, up to 5 different palattes in one room! It gave me a headache just looking at it! She was 7 months pregnant and needed the help so I loaded up my paint supplies, donned my paint clothes and we spent the day laughing and goofing as we tried to get the two bedrooms painted. She didn't have a ladder and the furniture took up most of the space in her rooms so I became an acrobat as I tried to paint from the tops of dressers, bookcases.....even jumping on her bed! Splash! Splash! I had now added lemon yellow and sea foam green to my increasingly colorful shirt.

I haven't had any large painting projects for a while, but I acquired a new color to my shirt from a smaller project. I had always dreamed of taking piano lessons as a girl, but being raised by a single mom with 5 kids, it was financially out of the question. Fast foward to age 28, we ended up with an old piano that my mom had stored in her basement for years. After months of painfully listening to me try to teach myself to play my supportive husband finally agreed to pay for me to have lessons. My sweet piano teacher, when she found out that I played from a kitchen chair, gave me an old piano bench that she had lying around. My good friend, Kim, showed me how to recover the seat and then I sanded it, replaced the screws and painted it black.

Life goes on, baby boy #3, Weston, made his appearance and the house projects keep coming. Finally up to this last weekend I was once again putting on this same T-shirt and thinking about how old and ragged it's getting. I was looking at all the different colors of paint that it had acquired and I was realizing all the memories that are visably stored on that shirt. It occured to me that a shirt that I once hated and considered my ugliest article of clothing had somehow morphed into something special. Now it was on to paint the deck a beautiful redwood color......105 degrees outside, hot as hades......more memories stored in something so trivial as a splash of paint.