Christmas

We had a wonderful Christmas this year!! We decided to stay home and have our own family Christmas for the first time. It was just too much to plan a trip, find a place for the dog to stay, and find a way to pay for it. I'll be honest...I LOVE Christmas with just our little family! It might be hard to convince me to go anywhere again. It was just so fun and relaxing for us.

Our whole week was busy and fun. On Sunday, we had the ward Christmas program that Will was in charge of. I helped a lot behind the scenes to get everything set, like music copies, new binders for everyone, things like that. But Will put everything together and it turned out great! We had four choir songs, one solo, one instrumental, and one a cappella group. Lots of fun and I had a friend and a young woman sit with our kids so that we could both be a part of it and not stress about the kids. It worked out well.

Monday I made some Christmas treats, although this year I was lame and didn't give them to neighbors. I was completely planning on it, but I realized I had nothing to deliver them in and honestly just felt a bit lazy! Hopefully next year I'll be better about doing that. :) I also went to a friends' house and played the piano while she played violin and recorded it for her parents, who are serving a mission.

Tuesday I made tons of cookies and we cleaned the house, and then had a big Christmas Eve dinner. We opened some presents - pajamas for Will and me, and new blankets for the kids. We also got Miracle on 34th Street, watched that and had hot chocolate. That's one of my favorite Christmas movies.

And of course Wednesday was the big day! Since we decided to stay home and Will got a last minute Christmas bonus we were not expecting, we had more presents than I thought we would! It was pretty fun, even though maybe that makes me sound shallow and materialistic. ;)

In the afternoon on Christmas we had dinner with our good friends, the Tanners. They're becoming like family to us here and we love it!

On Friday, since the weather was so nice, we went to Blue Heron Park. It's a park here that's only a few blocks away with a little playground, a pond and a path around the pond. There are TONS of geese there right now, it was pretty noisy. It was really funny to watch them fly and land on the ice, they were slipping and sliding everywhere. If you've never seen a goose slide all over ice, you're missing out. :)

We brought Ginny along too, and I think she had a good time.

What a fun week!!

Gingerbread house

So recently I discovered a difficulty I have with children. I always have these somewhat romantic notions when it comes to Christmas (and sometimes other things). For example, I thought about how fun it would be to have a night where we decorate the Christmas tree, put on Christmas music and drink hot cider. Instead of being a fun, relaxing evening, half of us were sick, Ben wanted to throw the ornaments (BALL!) and only Kaylee and I enjoyed the cider. The dog was crazy and there was way too much yelling involved. Somehow I feel like other parents do better at having fun during times like these, and I'm too uptight and just need to R-E-L-A-X. Hope I'm not the only one. :)

We made a gingerbread house today and I promised myself to just let the kids have fun, and not try to take over and want it all perfect. Do you guys know how hard that is for me??? Seriously. (I have issues.)

But we had a great time! The only problem was whiny Ben, but he's pretty much whiny all the time because he's not sleeping well at all lately. He just wanted to eat ALL the candy, of course - very much expected. He actually did pretty well at helping put candy on the house too, so it worked out alright and I think we all had fun!

I did it.

I finally came up with a solution to my Christmas tree dilemma! It was really getting so depressing, I was so sad about my poor, poor Christmas tree. Every day another ornament (or several) would have to be moved up to the top, or be completely destroyed by the dog. This is what my tree looked like...

SO SAD! I wanted to cry every time I saw it. Ben kept grabbing the garland and pulling out the tinsel strands, and he kept reaching higher than I expected and getting the ornaments. So frustrating. It was also sad because I really only had some blue and silver balls I bought, we got rid of our old ornaments (nothing special) when we moved and I didn't buy much this year.

I came up with this (slightly ghetto I suppose, but better ghetto gate than ghetto tree!):

Yes, we had an old door in our garage from when we changed Kaylee's door out, and it just happened to be a perfect fit! I just sectioned off the entire living room.

I had to use a bit of creativity for this part. A clasp, a hook and eye without the hook, a very large washer and a screw from an old hinge. Yep, it's...interesting. But it WORKS! It's easy to unhook, and I can slide the whole thing behind the piano when I don't want it. The kids and the dog pretty much just leave it alone when it's closed, and I can open it when we want to use the room or when we have company. Today I finished decorating the tree. Now it's beautiful, I can have presents under it, and nobody can get to it unless I allow them. It works really well because we don't use that room much anyway.

 Since I had hardly any ornaments, I spent the last couple of days making some. I made a dozen of these little guys:

And some of these, with salt dough, spray paint and glitter. Juvenile?? Perhaps a bit, but that's okay. I just needed SOMETHING.

I also went to the park today and picked up some pine cones to make these.

It was 65 degrees and sunny today. It's weird to me that people say the winters here are bad, because nowhere in my mind does "65 degrees," "December," and "bad winter" go together. It just...doesn't. Anyway, we had a GREAT time at the park! And I really wore Benjamin out:

Neither of my kids have ever fallen asleep at the high chair before. He didn't have a nap today and was apparently extremely tired! Poor kid just couldn't get comfortable.

(He was asleep the entire time in the video)

Christmastime!!

My favorite time of year!! We started decorating on Black Friday, of course, like we always do. We got a tree on Saturday and...it's still not done. Decorating a tree with two young kids, a puppy, and a kitten is rather frustrating. Kaylee is the only one that "gets" it, and she STILL has a hard time leaving the ornaments on the tree. More often though, it's her saying "MOOOOOMMY!! Ben is messing up the tree!!!!!!" And Ben just points at the tree excitedly saying "BALLS!!" And then picks his favorite and throws it as hard as he can, and the dog attempts to eat it. It's quite a party.

 

I realize this is not the best picture because it's too bright outside, but you get the idea. I'll get some better pictures when we have it finished. Although I don't know if I'll bother if I can't have any ornaments within 3 feet of the floor! Maybe I'll just call it good right now. :)

And here is my Christmas mantel. Okay...I know the stockings are super ghetto. They might have been $1 at Target. I don't know what kind of stockings I really want, so I can't shell out a bunch of money for stockings I'm not in love with, I'll just have to wait till I find the right ones! And yeah...I don't have fancy stocking holders either. Maybe next year?? Then I can stop poking holes in everything.

We got SNOW!!! It's so pretty, I love snow. (In December.) So anyone who wanted to see our house who hasn't seen it yet...there it is! We like her. We're not doing a whole lot of decorating outside this year. I would love a big wreath above the garage, and some Christmas lights, but for now I'm sticking with my green garland and red ribbons!

I did something a little different with our pajamas tradition this year. Normally we do pajamas on Christmas Eve, but this year I got some Christmas themed pajamas for the kids. I love Christmas pjs, but I didn't want to give them on Christmas Eve, then they can only wear them for a little while before it's weird. So this year, I gave them the day after Thanksgiving, so at least they can wear them for the season. I think they're so cute!

I even got them both sort of smiling. SHOCKING!! I'm glad Ben didn't do his "tough-guy" face like he normally does for pictures.

Fireplace Makeover

One of the first "eyesores" I had to fix in this house was the fireplace!! It was so out of date with an oak mantel and blue tiles. Here it is before:

I tried, and failed, to get a picture without a child. I took some later on before I did anything to it, but unfortunately I can't find those pictures...so this will have to do!

Here is the after!

 As you can see...I painted the wood and the tile on the floor, and Will helped me put new tile on the surround. I also painted the brass black. We LOVE how it turned out, it's so much brighter and more up-to-date now. Yay! I had to hurry and get a picture of it because the mantel set-up is all going to change for Christmas.

My latest build

I haven't built much lately, but recently, since I started working on the playroom, I've been wanting a set of little chairs and a table for the kids. I really wanted a set for Thanksgiving too because we'll have Kaylee, Ben and our nephew Ty, and I wanted them to have their own spot. I looked at IKEA and they had NOTHING. I guess they're redoing the whole kids' section or something, so they might have something new soon, but anyone who knows me knows I'm super impatient. Not to mention that it would have probably cost $150 or so anyway, and I wouldn't have had exactly the right colors. I looked at the Land of Nod and found EXACTLY what I wanted, but...it would have cost me $450 to buy the whole set. Yikes!

I built a kids chair last year, with a pattern from Ana White, but I never liked it very much. It was a bit too big, it was kind of ugly, and it wasn't very sturdy at all. I felt like it immediately started falling apart.

So I spent a few days in the garage, and designed these...

The best part is, they only cost about $60 total, including the finishing supplies. (To finish them I did one coat of primer, 2-3 coats of paint, and 3 coats of water-base polyurethane.) The second best part is, they're SUPER sturdy. It was also nice to be able to make them any color I wanted. :) They're certainly nowhere near perfect, but I'm super happy with how they turned out. I love being able to picture something in my head and create it for my kids!

Mom post.

Ben started "officially" going to nursery at church on the 10th of this month. He'd gone two weeks before that and did awesome, but his official day he wouldn't have ANYTHING to do with it. At first he ran right in, sat down on the blanket and picked a book to read, but then he noticed the other kids. They were all crying and saying "Mamaaaa!!" and so naturally he decided he must be sad and need mom too. But he didn't get over it - they brought him to me about 15 minutes later and he saw me, sniffed, and said "Mom." It was ridiculously adorable, but I'm a little sad he doesn't love nursery, and now I'm afraid it's going to be really hard to get him to go anymore. Ahh well. That's children for you. :) I did take some pictures of him though, to mark his first day:

I was just going to pick one, but how on earth could I pick one of these? The faces he makes just crack me up. I love the one where he's playing peek-a-boo with Daddy.

And then of course Kaylee wanted me to take a picture of her, because she loves loves LOVES getting her picture taken.

She's always full of goofy smiles for me. And any time I have the camera out, she begs for me to take a picture. Then she always wants to see it immediately. I wish I could take her back to the time when we only had film...

Man my kids are awesome!!

Playroom

Ever since the kids started getting bigger and noisier (lol, yeah, I know...they've barely started), I've thought about how AWESOME it would be to have a playroom. We moved into our new house and it was way better with them in their own rooms, because we split the toys between the rooms and there was more space. But Kaylee always made a huuuuge mess in her room, which isn't that big of a deal really, except that if she needs me at night I'd be tripping over toys, and I didn't like that idea. Same thing with Ben's room, except he is never quite as messy (yet).

We have a basement room, a living room type area, and I decided we'd try making that the playroom. I put all their toys down there, and we all LOVED it. The kids come and go as they please, it's close enough to hear them and check on them easily, but far enough so that when they're playing with their "noisy toys" it doesn't bug me.

And when it looks like this? I don't even care. We can spend 10-15 minutes once or twice a week to organize and clean it up, and then they destroy it all over again. Works for us.

And then...I just had to get thinking. Of course. I couldn't just leave it as it was. It was kinda gross, to be honest. The texture on the walls and ceiling was way over done, everything was just dingy and needed freshening up. So I went to work, of course! I started on Monday October 28th and finished on Halloween (hence the "no homemade costumes this year" thing, at least partially).

I scraped the walls and the ceiling, just to get some of the texture off. At least the big, sharp pointy pieces. Then I filled and caulked holes and cracks, and primed the ceiling. I sanded one wall like CRAZY to get it smooth for a mural I'm going to paint. Will helped me remove all of the molding and put it back on correctly (they didn't push it down into the carpet, so it looked horrible). I caulked and painted the molding, and painted the ceiling. I took down all of the can lights and spray painted them white instead of the beige that they were, and in the process got showered with mouse droppings. Ugh. They were old, I think. Then I painted the walls, and replaced all of the switches and outlets. It took me four days to do that, and it brought back some memories of working on our Salt Lake City house that I think were repressed. I was so exhausted.

Anyway, here are some "before" pictures:

In progress:

It's still in progress. I have BIG plans for this room. But the #1 thing I had to do was get it cleaned up and ready for building and decorating, so this is where we're at right now:

I'm not sure what is up with Kaylee's face in this next one...

Obviously, we still need to get the vents back up (nothing to screw into, so it's a job I need Will's help for!). And we're still contemplating what to do with the closet/storage space. Leave it closed to the kids? Ball pit? Fort? Reading nook? We can't decide.

Before, everything sort of blended into a big, beige mass...now it has some clean lines and definition. Soon it will be time to really get going on making this the most AWESOME playroom! I'm so excited!!!

Halloween

We had a fun Halloween! I'll admit...it wasn't nearly as cool as last year, but I'm not that big into Halloween anyway, so everything I care about (the kids dressing up, and getting candy) happened, so it's all good.

I wanted to make Kaylee and Ben some cute costumes this year, but I changed my mind a couple of weeks beforehand and decided to just do something really simple. I just didn't have the energy to make anything this year! Lazy bum, I know. ;)

Kaylee was a princess (per her request). We just put her in one of her old dresses and bought a crown for her head. Simple enough for me...except her hair, oh her hair. That took a little while, but she sits nice and still for me if I put a movie on. I think it turned out super cute.




And Benjamin was a monkey! We got it on sale at Target. Yessss. He kind of threw a fit at first, but got used to it fast.

The Friday before Halloween was our ward party. It was fun, but there was one very, very important thing missing - THE PIE!! There was NO PIE at our party. I nearly cried. (Just kidding.) There were, however, about 30 soups and chili's to choose from...

The kids went trunk-or-treating there. Ben tries to say trick-or-treat, but it comes out like "dee-a-dee" or something. And thank you is "dee-dee." He likes his dee's, apparently. Kaylee did awesome remembering to say thank you, I was proud of her. There's something about that moment when your kid says "thank you!" for the first time without prompting, especially since for the longest time Kaylee would glare at anyone who I told her to say thank you to. Lovely.

Mummy cupcakes!

We're headed to our ward Halloween party tonight, and they asked us to all bring some cupcakes for the cupcake walk. I'm not really posting this so much to show off my cupcakes, because...well, I don't think they're that great, but I wanted to show a cool trick I discovered for transporting cupcakes. I don't exactly want one of those fancy cupcake holder thingys, I mean, I would hardly ever use it and it would just take up room in my kitchen. I suppose it would be great for people who bring cupcakes places ALL THE TIME. But I don't.

So I came up with this! Use strips of paper towel or napkin, about 6"x1". Put one in each hole in the cupcake pan, and put the cupcakes over the paper. Like this:

Then cover loosely with plastic wrap, and when it's time to get them out, it's easy to grab the ends of the paper and pull out the cupcake without touching the frosting. Easy as pie, and it doesn't require any special boxes or materials. Yay!

Here's my favorite mummy.

Isn't he just adooooorable??

Kids, house, dog. My life!

It's been a while since I updated! I honestly haven't had a whole lot to blog about. I'm working on finishing the family room right now. As of now, I have the popcorn ceiling scraped, repaired and painted, the walls and trim painted, curtains hung, and I need to finish the fireplace and accessories and it'll be done. The fireplace is the big job right now that I've just been putting off...as much as I love home projects, that one is going to be a big one and I'm not really looking forward to it!!

Here is a sneak peek of the family room! Isn't the ceiling just lovely?? I'm pretty proud of it, I must say. It's certainly not perfect but it's still a hundred times better than the popcorn.

 Here's a before picture for comparison - you can't really see the popcorn, but if you look close you can tell it's there.

Popcorn ceilings are tricky to show before/after pictures of, because it's a HUGE difference in real life, and you simply can't show how amazing it is on camera! The thing that shocks me every time is how much higher the ceiling feels without it.


Other than little home projects here and there, I've been doing a lot of crafting and trying to keep the kids and dog entertained.

Here is a recent project:

I got the idea on Pinterest and re-created it. The wood is plain old pine boards from Lowes that I "weathered" using vinegar and steel wool. Soaked the steel wool in vinegar, rubbed it on the wood. Repeat 5 times or so, over the course of a few hours, and that's the color I got. Then I used acrylic paint to finish it. Easy peasy, much better than regular stain, and I love how it turned out!


Yesterday I let Benjamin try finger painting for the first time. He did better than I expected. He tried to eat it first thing, but after he tasted it one time he didn't try again. I guess it isn't very tasty stuff! I think today I'll try making edible play dough. I remember my mom making that when I was little, and I loved it! I bet my kids will too. :)

Ginny is getting big. She is still VERY much a puppy though, of course. She's almost house trained, but still has accidents here and there. And she's pretty bad at using her designated spot in the yard, she prefers to go right outside the back door, but...we're working on that. *sigh* Nothing like going outside in the morning to find a pile of poop. Blech!

She's really good at sit, stay...sometimes. She automatically sits when I get her food now, and doesn't go to eat until I say so (at least, for a couple of seconds! haha). I think that's pretty good. In the first picture, if she could talk, she would be saying something like "HEYCANIGETUPORWHATTHISISN'TVERYMUCHFUN!!!!!!!! YOUHAVEABOUTASECONDOKAYI'MDONENOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

It was extremely difficult to get that picture of her sitting. Just saying.

Isn't she cute, though? Sometimes I have to remind myself of how cute she is, because she sure drives me nuts. She and the kids like to work together: they take turns being naughty so that I don't have a second of calm. But, yesterday I was feeling sick, and I was able to take a nap. So I really can't complain. Life is good!