Before and After of the Kitchen

Our kitchen has been a work in progress.  It's finally to a point where I don't see all the things that need to be done to finish it off...there's just counters and backsplash left, but that will be in a while.  (***Luckily I took these pictures a few days ago, because if you came to my house today you'd see that it looks like a bomb went off in it!)

 We just took the cupboard doors off these two cabinets and now have open storage.  I'm really liking having them open...plus we keep it neater.

  Now for the biggest change we've made this year.......drum roll please......

Tada!  We got new appliances.  Although I love the 70's, we finally said goodbye to our faithful fridge and oven.  The fridge had started to leak a gallon of water at a time, so we said hello to this little...BIG...beauty.

I'm absolutely loving having the freezer on the bottom.  Now all the things we use daily are at eye level...love it!  But let's be honest, anything with a light in it would have been an improvement.

We are seriously some of the luckiest...BLESSED...KIND OF GHETTO....people.  We were given this gas convection oven from some friends of my mom.  They were getting double ovens and decided to gift it to us.  We're ghetto because we take whatever we can get...sometimes it's really nice ovens, sometimes it's falling apart/needs repairs items.  Oh well, you win some you lose some!  This time we definitely won!  I absolutely love having a gas range again, and I'm adjusting and learning to love the convection oven, luckily it can be a normal oven too.  

Don't you love the cord running out of my calendar.  That's one thing about older homes I don't love...where all the plugs and phone cords are.  Oh well.  I posted this because I found this super cute chore chart that I loved and wanted to make my own version.  Sam and Maggie wrote the names on the spots and we wrote chores on the clothes pins.  Then after the week is up we rotate all the chores.  It's great, and super cheap!  I really love that the kids are responsible to clip it over when they get their stuff done...less nagging by me the better!

Oh the lovely before.  I can't believe I walked into this kitchen and could imagine it as anything other than ugly!  

Tearing out the old to put in the new

The last couple of weeks we've been working on projects at our house.  We had a pretty small pad of cement in our back yard, and crappy old falling apart steps, and it is finally time to replace them!  Hooray!!!  This is pretty much what any hard labor project looks like at our house.  Kendall and Sam doing a majority of the work, the boys "helping", and Maggie wanting to help on the fun stuff...like using a sledge hammer and pick.

Josh is freakishly strong.  He kept picking up the chunks of cement to throw them into the wheelbarrow, and would refuse help...until his muscles started shaking.

 I think Kendall made at least 30 trips back and forth dumping the cement.  What a babe!  I really love that he isn't afraid to work hard and to get a job done.  He reminds me a lot of my dad in that way.

 Jack loading up the wheelbarrow.

 This boy has been such a good helper.  He's getting so strong, and loves to work with his dad!

Man I love that handsome face!

 Maggie contributed by baking "apple pies" in the sand box.  She kept bringing them around to everyone so they wouldn't be hungry.

She also made "cookies."

 I'm getting super excited for our new larger pad of cement.  I can't wait to have barbeques and dinners outside!  Now on to cutting out the grass, and getting it all leveled.

My Favorite and My Best

If you can't tell from the title, we have been watching a lot of Charlie and Lola...courtesy of the library.  It is Maggie's new favorite show...which I love because they are sweet to each other and I love how much imagination is used!  One of my favorite things for my kids to do is color, paint, draw, do chalk, side walk painting...anything with art.  Maybe that's because I am an art nerd; I don't know, but it really gets me excited when they get into it. We were mixing colors this day to see what we could make. (Just a side note, most, if not all, of our art days are done while the babies are either napping or snapped in their seats!)

Sam is really able to focus and not just do blobs...that was a big day for me, might I add.  I love his drawings and the way his imagination works!

 Maggie was making a really cool shade of Teal and she was so proud of herself...don't mind the crazy hair!

 Since we are constantly creating at our house, I wanted to have somewhere to put all of our stuff that wasn't just plastered on the fridge.  When I saw this on pinterest I knew it was exactly what I wanted.  Thanks to my fabulous sister Wendy and her awesome vinyl skills, I was able to turn our garage door into a masterpiece displayer.  I really like the yellow on the one I pinned, but it didn't really match my kitchen, so I went with brown vinyl.  Now I just need the babies to leave the bottom ones alone so we can hang things on there...maybe next year!   So, what do you think?

(Notice the cute picture in the top left.  Sam drew that for me for Mother's Day.  I love it.  Especially my little high heel shoes and boobs.)

Current projects and a fishy face

The last couple of weeks we have been quite the busy bees at our house.  Sam and Maggie are officially in their new room and it is looking so cute!  I am still working on getting it all together and hope to have it wrapped up for the most part this next week. I decided to post a couple pictures of what I've been up to.  This is our stairwell. I love this quote.  I really wanted to put something on this wall that would become a mantra of sorts.  We go up and down the stairs all day long and I really wanted this to be subtle but meaningful.  I realize none of my kids can read yet, but it's coming quickly.  The painting of the Jordan River Temple was done by my great grandpa when he was in his 80's.  I think that's pretty awesome.  I'm really not much of a sentimental person, but I do love to put things in my house that are functional and meaningful.  I'm thinking I'm going to paint the frame either aqua or yellow.  Not quite sure yet.  What's your vote?

 I am almost done with Sam and Maggie's quilts.  I can't wait to be done with this tedious project!  I'm definitely loving the way they are turning out.  The ribbons all over the place are something I'm trying out...we shall see if I love it or not.

 My sister Laura and I are making some Halloween clay figures.  Yes, I know, getting an early start, but with
Pinterest there are way too many great ideas floating around.  Finished products coming soon.

The next pictures are from our camping trip from last
weekend.  My immediate family gets together for a camping trip annually and this time Jeanette planned it.  Pioneer Campground up by Hyrum Damn was a bit hit...minus all the bugs...   I only took 3 pictures sadly!  Uncle Brad teaching Maggie how to fish. (a few of these pictures are borrowed from Jeanette)

She actually caught this little beauty.  It was so cute...she was so proud of this little fishy...she carried it around, showing everyone.

It's so fun to spend so many days together so the kids can really spend some quality time together.  Jack and Joshy couldn't get enough kisses from miss Charlie.  

A rattle snake was found, skinned and eaten.....not by me of course!

 Everyone had so much fun on the river.

 The milk carton race was also a big hit.  Sam even won!  He was so excited!  His is on the far left with a cute little leaf sail.

 This was our beautiful spot.

 As we were packing up to leave I turned and noticed that Josh had climbed this huge tree.  It freaked me out so much...this little boy is such a monkey!  He thought he was very clever and loved that he'd startled me so bad!

Glass yard art tutorial

This week has been a whirlwind of boredom!  All of my kids have been sick and we had the very worst sickness night in the record of our family!  It started on Tuesday night with Josh, then has progressed through all the kiddos through today.  Now just Josh is all the way better.  On Friday night the babies had almost uncontrollable fevers (the only thing that would bring them down was a tubby, even with Ibuprofen and Tylenol), Kendall and I both got, at the very most, a scattered 1-2 hours of sleep...not bad to some of you I know, but it was a record crappy night on our list.  Plus, if either one of them touched the other at all, all hell broke loose...time to upgrade to a king size bed!  So, my tender mercy this week has been my garden.  I really love spending time puttering around, weeding, mowing and just enjoying the fruits of my work.  Even just walking out to get the mail makes me happy when I see that all my flowers are starting to bloom...I'm a nerd I know, but I really do love it!

I have been collecting glass from...everywhere...for a while and it has been sitting in my laundry room in boxes for months.  I finally decided to make my yard art!  So after snuggling _____(insert name here of sick child)_____for a while, I'd go change a load and glue a stack of glass.  Then, back to snuggling.

 Some of you may be like my husband and think these are kind of weird, or clutter, but I really love how the light plays around all the different types of glass throughout the day.  And this year I added a lot of color to them and I really love the way they turned out.

The picture below was on the 4th.  

 This is today.  So only 11 days later my flowers have gotten ginormous. You can hardly even see the birdhouse hiding out in the sunflowers!  That's why they are one of my favorite things ever.  They grow so fast that you can actually see them doubling each day.  (They are the Russian Mammoths in the back that grow really tall.)  The kids think they are super fun too!

 This may be my favorite piece so far.  I love it!

 This one didn't photograph very well, but I really like this one too!

 FYI...I, in no way, profess to be a "real" gardener...I just have fun planting what I think looks good together.   I'm sure I'm breaking some sort of rules or something, but I just pretend to know what I'm doing.

 So, how do you make these cute yard art stakes you ask?

Supplies:
-Variety of glass plates, cups and bowls in all different shapes, colors and sizes.  (Most of mine are from my sister Laura's yard sale, and tons from the DI.)
-E6000 (This glue is awesome.)  Use a coupon at Joann's.
-Vases with medium-ish openings.  (These are at the bottom of your piece to hold it on the stake.)
-Rebar or sturdy wooden stakes.

1- Stack up your items in different ways.  Try different arrangements before you glue them all together. If you're struggling with the order, you can look at mine to see the order I like.  Sometimes it helps to walk away for a while, then come back and make sure you like what you've done.


2- Apply a generous amount of glue in between each layer of glass.  Make sure you have a good bond between each layer.


3- Let dry for at least 24 hours. Make sure no one will be bumping these because they are pretty topsy turvy until they are put on the stakes.  (Been there done that!)

4- Pound your stakes into the ground and slide your yard art on!




So what do you think???  Yard art or clutter?           (BTW...Kendall said that they've grown on him now...)

Happier than a Bird

As previously posted, we have been working on Sam and Maggie's new room.  Last night, Kendall got the first sanding of the walls done.  (We had a yard sale on Saturday and we bargained that if I took all the kids, he'd get the first coat of mudding done on the walls.  It ended up being a win, win because the kids did great!!!)  So while he's been working on that, I'm figuring out how I want to decorate.  It's kind of hard to do a room that has a boy and girl together....not too girly, not too macho....it's kind of hard.  So far this is what I've picked and made.

My sister Laura made these frames, for lack of a better word, at Christmas time; we just painted over them to put this hilarious vinyl on top.  It makes me laugh every time!!!  The best part was when I told Sam what it said he chuckled out loud...love that kid.

 These are the main colors I'm doing.  The middle mustard color on the card is called Curry Sauce by Olympic paints.  I painted their bunk beds this color and the back of the french fry board.  The tan chip has the colors I've done upstairs (the darkest, Warm Buff), and the middle one, Filoli Antique Lace, is going to be our downstairs family room color; these are both by Valspar. The aqua chip is going to be the color of their bedroom walls.  It's the lightest color on the chip; called Grand Hotel Mackinac Blue by Valspar.  I have a large coffee table I'm going to paint for them too, and I think I will do it the darkest aqua color called Nautical.  I'm thinking about doing the top of that in chalk board paint so they can draw tracks for the cars and stuff.  I am getting super excited to paint the fun colors!!!  They will really start to pull everything together.

 This has been my biggest hang up of creative juices!  I've had the fabric for their quilts for months now, and I just don't want to make them!!!  Which means I put off everything else I want to make because I'm the type of person who likes to finish things before starting new stuff.  Anyways, this is the material for Maggie's quilt.

 And Sam's quilt.

 Thanks to having some of the material on hand and a lovely gift card from my MIL for my birthday, these cost very little new money.  (All of the fabric is from Material Girls Quilt Shop.)  So, what do you guys think?  Do you like my color combos???

 This poor little lamb has been cutting massive amounts of teeth!  He has been so sad around bed times, so he's been snuggling with us a lot lately.  I took this yesterday as he was napping.  The little stinker is so sweet and peaceful when sleeping!!!

 Sam actually asked to have his picture taken this morning...that's a first for a long time!