My Kids Are Real Life Super Heroes!

Picture taken on Hannah's phone during a random Target trip.

The other night we rented a movie we (MDH and I) watched about 15 years ago.

We remembered liking it and thought the older kids might get a kick out of it.

Turns out there was a lot of swearing. 

and 

It also turns out that over the years we've (MDH and I have) become more sensitive to it.

We finished the show.

Not sure if we should have.

Then apologized to the kids for the swearing.

Then Josh said, "Well, what I hear at school every day it much worse."

"Really?! Wow! I'm so sorry" was my reaction.

But here it is.

These kids of mine really are super-heroes!

They live in a really scary world that can be really dark and heavy, cold, uncaring and hard.

And yet they are full of light and goodness and charity.

When you're around them you feel better about yourself and about the world.

They are good just for the sake of being good.

They love each other and they like each other and I like that a lot.

They even seem to like me and their father and they listen to us.

That means a lot to me to.

When I see movie stars or athletic heroes on T.V. I can't help but scoff a little and think to myself

they're nothing compared to the people that live in my house.

And they are amazing people

Despite my unintentional contribution of non-uplifting media in their lives.

My people are the real heroes!

And I feel like the luckiest person alive.

My kids truly are real life Super Heroes!

Once upon a time I used to photograph every little detail of our lives, our yard, family...everything.
But lately I just can't believe how my days just fly by with every moment full of something, everything and nothing all at the same time.
When my kids were little, 4 of them 8 and under, I would try to imagine what it would be like when 3 of them would be teenagers together.
My imaginings didn't even come close to how difficult and wonderful it is.
And so here we are and my children have taken to being our crazy life photographers/documentors.
And that's ok. In fact it's better than ok. I love it.
These photographs are some of the latest downloads from Hannah's camera.

The weather has finally warmed up and with it our flowers have blossomed and our grass dried.

MDH checked out the sprinklers and fixed the winter casualties on Saturday.

I was talking to him from the porch while he was testing the sprinklers and low and behold a rainbow appeared. Quick thinking Hannah grabbed her camera and documented it.

 Last late summer/early fall MDH planted some random tulip bulbs he liked.

I had never seen the packages and so I had no idea what he'd planted.

This spring I was surprised with tulips in sunset hues!

They are so beautiful they make me want to cry.

This little leaf doesn't know if it's a leaf or a petal so it's both.

I've never seen one like it before.

Nature is awesome!

Meet Daphne.

When we lived in Oregon our friends had a Daphne-Odora bush by their front door.

It was so fragrant and beautiful you felt like you could and should drink it up.

Then we moved into a new house that also had a Daphne-Odora right by the front door.

We promised each other when we moved that one day we'd have a Daphne-Odora by our front door again.

Last year we made that promise come true and we planted Daphne by our front door.

This spring we are enjoying that sweet-sweet fragrance again and loving it.

It is one of the best things you will ever smell! I promise.

If you don't believe me come on over and smell for your self.

I love you Daphne!

Our daffodils have been especially cheerful this year.

And last but not least, tonight's sunset was a real winner!

The thing I didn't know I wanted but I really did and now I'm getting it I know it.

What is that thing, you may wonder.

It's a new roof of course.

Life's funny that way. I didn't know I wanted or needed a new roof until the windstorm of 2011.

When the wind blew and blew and blew

We lost and lost and lost 

soffit and shutters and lots of shingles.

So the insurance said we needed a new roof.

This week and probably next week we're getting one.

I really like it.

We went with a dark charcoal color.

In the spring we'll replace the shutters and paint our front door.

I'm thinking charcoal for both of those too to help tie everything together.

Merry Christmas to us!

Just Hanging Around - Decorating the Living Room

Today I hung pictures on my freshly painted living room walls.

Can I just say Stress-Full!

The walls we'd worked so hard to patch and sand and paint were so beautiful it was hard to make myself take a hammer and nail to it.

So hard in fact I had to call in reinforcements to give me a pep-talk and tell me it was going to be okay!

Aubri's really good at telling me everything is going to be okay and isn't that what friends are for?

As I got ready to hang the pictures I realized I was going to have to use math.....good thing I like math.

Here's what I did just in case you decide to hang a semi-symmetrical-horizontal-parallel picture grouping sometime.

It really helped that my pictures were all 12x12 inch squares.

I found my center and using my level placed painter's tape along the center line making sure it was straight up and down. (the left edge of the purple tape line is the center.)

From there I decided how many inches I wanted between the edge of each picture. Horizontally I wanted each picture to be spaced 7 inches and vertically 5 inches apart.

I  knew the nail would need to be in the center of the picture (6 inches in) so if I divide the center space amount (7 inches) in half = 3.5 inches and add that to the 6 inches to find the center of the photo you get 9.5 inches.

So my first two marks were made 9.5 inches on either side of the center.

Wow sounds like I'm writing a story problem.

From there I added

6 inches + 7 inches (gap) + 6 inches = 19 inches

My next two marks were made 19 inches to the right and 19 inches to the left of the first two marks I made.

I put painters tape on the wall in the general area of each mark and then used a level to measure out and mark each spot with a pencil on the tape.

Now moving up.

5 inch (gap) + 12 picture = 17 inches

Each point was marked exactly 17 inches above the first row.

I used a level again to make sure the marks were straight vertically from each other and straight horizontally.

(This is the point where I called my friend to come and check my work.)

On my pencil mark on the tape I pushed the nail through slightly to make a small hole (indentation) in the wall and then I peeled the tape off and hammered the nail in through the small hole I'd made with the nail.

So, here's my before.

AND...

Here's my after!

What do you think?

I love it!

In fact I can't stop looking at it.

And asking my 4 year old what she thinks.

She finally said, "You keep asking and I keep telling you it looks good. Come-on-mom."

Hmmm? is she 4 or 14?

And here's my button monogram.

I love it too.

I ended up going to Ben Franklin and having them cut a mat for me.

They used some left over matting and I just had them do a basic cut so my final price was mucho inexpensive! Which I like very much, thank you!

This is one of those rare projects that turned out even better than it looked in my brain and that makes me oh so very happy!

A little of what I'm working on.

Well, I say a little of what I'm working on but really it's what we (as in MDH and I (mostly him though)) have been working on. Because I absolutely needed and wanted his help on this project.
Painting.....
Let's be honest.
It's intimidating and I'm scared of it.
and
He's really good at it. (It's one of the jobs he had to help pay for school.)
and
We have vaulted ceilings double scary.
So, because he loves me we painted our front room.

When we moved into this house almost 3 years ago Every. Single. Room. was painted yellow. I am so sick of yellow. During the day it's a really nice soft off-white yellow but at night it is a screaming burn your retinas yellow except for one wall in the front room which is a khaki yellow. I think the previous owners were going for an accent wall sort of a thing but it's really close to the color of the other yellows so in my opinion it doesn't work. However, I've lived with it for almost 3 years......because....well, I don't know what.....maybe refer to what I said above.....intimidating etc.

But now I have a plan.
I even ordered fabric for my plan.
I really hope when it's all put back together it looks as good in real life as it does in my head.

Living Room 

Before (6:30 AM this morning)

Yellow and Khaki extravaganza

After (2:00 pm this afternoon)

Looks a little more blue than I thought it would.

The paint is "Silver Marlin"

I was going for Grayish-Blueish-Greenish. It's more gray in real-life.

 Another Before

Another After

Final Before

 Final After

My favorite part was watching the new paint cover up the old, dingy, dirty, patched yellow. It just looks so fresh and clean! I love it!

And here's a little preview of my budget friendly photo art for this room. I'm really pretty excited about it.

It involves Modge Podge (which I've decided is my craft supply drug of choice) Love the stuff! It's good for so many things.

Hopefully the room will be back in place soon

impromptu project

Let me start with two facts.

I love the Internet and the myriad of people who are willing to share their fabulous ideas - for free!

and

I love my great friends and their willingness to share their great ideas and the great ideas they find on the Internet with me.

This very quick project inspiration came to me by way of Shonda

The process was developed by Infarrantly Creative,

Digital picture available from Lil' Luna,

And picture printed at Costco

Finally, the frame and mat were obtained at our local thrift store. They were circa early 90's and the mat in particular was trendy early 90's colors....not my favorite right now. 

(Sorry, I was too excited to get started so I didn't take any before pictures.)

But they just got a make-over with some Krylon satin black spray paint.

So fast and easy.

The only hard part was keeping the cotton from the cottonwood trees from sticking to the wet paint.

For the photo I used spray adhesive to attach it to some foam board cut to fit in the frame.

Then I spread mod-podge over the photo laid a piece of canvas over the photo and mod-podge and pulled it off leaving the imprint of the grain of the fabric giving the look of the photo  being printed on canvas.

Infarrantly Creative has a detailed tutorial.

My only tip is to indeed follow her advice and use the brush-stroke mod-podge. I only had regular matte finish mod-podge and although it worked fine it didn't hold the detail of the canvas as much as I would have liked.

I'll be doing this again on a family photo and use the brush-stroke mod-podge for sure.

You wouldn't believe how quickly this worked up and I love it!

This picture is going to be a part of a grouping for my living room.

I want to have this room all decorated and acting as a formal living room by Sept. We've lived here for 2 1/2 years now and it's time I decorated!

I'll keep you posted on the progress.

In the meantime I'll be adjusting a dress for Banana to wear to her choir concert tonight. (it was my mom's dress and she looks beautiful in it...Banana's choir is singing songs from the musical Hairspray.)

Also, I need to pick up black color hairspray and dark make-up for Doodle and Banana who are a part of our stake play this week. The King and I.....we'll see how well I can make my two extremely white, blond and red headed children look like they have beautifully colored Asian skin and hair.

Wish me luck.

Why Hello!

Why Hello Little Miss Sunshine!

It's so nice to see you. The time has dragged on too slowly since I last saw your smiling face.

Please stay for a while and invite your friends, butter daffodil and purple tulip. Oh and don't forget cotton candy hyacinth and sweet little petite candy-tuft. We'll all have a great time together.

feeling a bit crafty --- at last!

It's taken me a few months to feel crafty again.

Christmas almost killed me.

I've had this project setting in the cupboard for MONTHS!

I finally felt like taking 20 minutes and completing it.

So I did!

AND

I love it.

I think I may tackle a few more house decorating projects around here.

I took months and months off.

But I'm feeling the itch now.

I knew I had the perfect color of green in my long neglected arsenal of paints.

Unfortunately, my paints had been neglected and the color I wanted was completely dried.

Blah!

But I did have a different green.....and classic tan......so I was able to concoct my perfect green.

I decided to name my new paint color friend.

I pondered avocado for a moment but it had too negative of a color connotation

so I settled on Celery.

I'd like you to meet Celery!

Isn't she pretty?!

Like I said I've had the parts for this setting in my cupboard for months.

I ordered the vinyl last May......ukum..

Ordered it from a seller on Etsy.

Empressive Designs

You can check out the shop here if you want.

The board is 8" x 8" with 3/8" holes 1 1/2" off center 1" down.

There was a floral flourish on the left bottom corner that was too big and  was going to hang off the board so I trimmed it before applying the vinyl and then added it at a different angle so it would fit better.

I don't think you can tell if you look at the bottom picture you can see there are a few more swirlies.

I have a few other boards to go in this square wreath for different holidays but I wanted one for in-between holidays.

It makes me smile.

(p.s. the square wreath is from Ben Franklin Craft)

Painting --- a project worth bragging about!

Banana has been wanting to paint her room for two years. You got it, ever since we moved in! The problem was she wasn't sure about a color.
When she saw this comforter in an ad a while ago she loved it and was inspired to paint her room blue.
I love blue.........and I had a blue room my teenage years so I was all for it.
She decided to have this be one of her Value Projects for YW (Knowledge to be specific.)

Boy did she work and boy did she gain a lot of knowledge.
She cleaned out her room.
Moved furniture.
Fixed holes in the walls.
Sanded walls.
Washed walls.
Removed light and plug plates.
Taped off windows, light switches and trim.
Primed.
and
Painted.
Removed tape.
Cleaned up drop cloths.
Moved furniture back in place.
and even cleaned out her closet.

She said she love, love, loves it! And she thinks she enjoys it even more because SHE did it!

What a great lesson learned! Not only has she gained practical knowledge and experience she's learned how great it can feel to accomplish something that takes time and is a challenge and how rewarding the end result can be.

We are so proud of her!
I am so grateful for an inspired YW program!

Tulips, Daffodils and Hyacinth.....OH MY!

Loving all of my bulbs as they are coming up!

Ahhhhh, spring at last!

Home Improvement...

Back when we got our red cupboard that's in our entry way I was able to pick up some fun lamps for way, way cheap! In fact, the lamp pictured below left was free! It just needed a lamp shade. I finally found one I liked at the thrift store (never used, still wrapped in plastic with the original price tag) for $2. Can you believe it. the one on the right is tall, super skinny and kind of funky but I love it.

This lamp is my favorite! It sits by my side of the bed. I call it mini pearl, because she still has her price tag on. But the tag makes me happy because it reminds me of what a great deal we got. (It was even less than what the tag says.) I know the tag drives MDH crazy and so I'm sure one of these days, because I love my husband, I'll take the tag off, but until then, because my husband loves me, he doesn't say a word about the tag.

MDH has been building shelves in the garage and putting up old kitchen cupboards that my parents gave us (also in the garage). What a difference shelves can make!

********

While perusing the thrift store one day with Banana we came upon two ottomans.

Again, they're kind of funky but we fell in love. And can't beat thrift store prices!

Banana gets the round one in her room and Sweet Cheeks gets the square one (which opens and has storage inside and now is home to her barbies.) And, of course, Sweet Cheeks had to pose for pictures too.