Our cute kids!

I decided it's high time for a "kids" update. They have grown so much lately! I'm thankful that they play together well. Even though they can make the living room look like this in about 5 minutes:

Kaylee just goes into her room and brings out ALL the toys. Then dumps them all over. And Ben crawls around and does whatever damage he possibly can. Yes, that's right, Ben is crawling! Finally! WOOHOO!! A lot of people complain about when their kids start crawling or walking, but I love it. More independence = less whining, with my kids anyway. And anyone that knows me well knows that I do not like whining. So the less whining there is around my house, the better.

Alright, I'm going to start with Kaylee. She'll be 2 1/2 on January 31st. Remember my blog post a while back about how I thought she was going to be a great big sister? I was so right. She is an AMAZING big sister to Ben. She looks out for him like nothing else. She gets really concerned when he falls and gets hurt and if I'm not in the room and he bumps his head, she comes running to tell me right away. It's nice to know she's looking out for him.

Everyone at church loves her. I get complimented all the time on how good she is during meetings. They tell me she is wonderful in Nursery. She plays well with the other kids, she listens, and she participates. The other week one of the leaders told me she seemed ready for Sunbeams (she still has a whole year left) because she listens to the lesson, and she LOVES singing time.

She's started talking so much the last few months. She took her time with talking for sure, but now she's a little mockingbird. I have to admit that I need to be more careful with what I say. I say the word "stupid" far too often. "Ugh, this stupid thing won't work." "Stupid cat! Get outside!!!" You know. Nothing horrible, but I never realized how much I use it until Kaylee started copying me. And one day she said "Stupid Mommy!" when I couldn't get something to work right. That was my 'moment' when I realized I better change that. ;) Her favorite word right now is "Okay." The other day at church, I said "Kaylee, you need to sit down, we're going to say a prayer and then it's time for Nursery." She said "Okay." and sat down. You probably have to hear it to appreciate it, but it's adorable coming from a two-year-old. She's starting to put several words together, and sometimes I can ask her "What happened?" and actually make sense of the answer. YES! I love it.

She recognizes orange and pink (for the most part) and right now everything else, she says, is white. She can almost say the whole alphabet, she just misses a letter here and there. She recognizes the letters B, K, X, Y, W, and maybe a few others that I'm forgetting, and knows several shapes.

She's an awesome eater. She will literally eat anything I give her. Okay, there is one exception: a veggie burger. We went to Costco and there was a veggie burger sample that we got. She took a bite, made a HORRIBLE face and gave it to Will. I must admit, I've had a few veggie burgers in my lifetime, and this was not exactly the epitome of veggie burgers. It kind of tasted like half chewed stir-fry. Eh. Not my favorite.

She is officially potty trained as of about 3 months ago. She's doing great. We have the occasional accident still, but it's usually only when she is playing and forgets.

She HATES bedtime. With a passion. I wish I could get her to calm down, but boy oh boy when she gets going there is no stopping it. The last "big" bedtime tantrum she had, she was running half naked around the house and then peed on the living room rug. All while screaming bloody murder. That's the time when I just said forget it and put her in bed, even though it wasn't even bedtime yet. She was supposed to have a bath (hence the half nakedness). Seriously, it was nuts. On a good note, she usually sleeps really well at night. Once she's asleep, she's out for a good 11-12 hours. Aaaaand I probably just jinxed that.



And now for Ben! He is 8 1/2 months old now. He started crawling last Saturday. He's all over the place now, and I seriously think it's adorable. It's so cute when I go into another room and a few minutes later he comes crawling in. Somehow, it's not so cute once they're walking and won't leave you alone for 1/2 a second, like Kaylee lately, but I'll enjoy it for now.

He is also a great eater so far. I believe he's eaten everything I've given him that was NOT a puree. He hates purees, but I'm not too concerned about that one. I give him a bland/cooked/simple version of whatever we're eating in little pieces, and he does great!

He has two teeth so far. I love his little grins with his little bottom teeth sticking out. I can't get a picture of them. Whenever he smiles, he bounces all over the place. It's seriously impossible to get anything but a blank look on this boy's face because he's SO wiggly if he's doing anything other than...well, staring blankly!

He loves to babble. He sits there and says "Mamamamaamama" or "Dadadadadadada" or sometimes "BAH! BAH! BAH!" I love babbling. It makes me smile every time I hear it.

Lately, sleeping is not going as well as it did for a while. After we put him down for the night, he ALWAYS wakes up again within an hour. Sometimes he wants to eat more, sometimes not. It's a little frustrating because our 'couple time' is always after the kids go to bed at night. I'm kind of selfish I guess, and I really like to have some time without kids, so it's hard for me to deal with that. He also wakes up every night again, and naps are always a struggle. *sigh* I despise this getting kids to sleep stuff.

He learned to clap. I kept trying to teach him but he kept his little hands in tight fists and wouldn't do it. I finally got him to, and now he'll clap back at me when I clap at him.

His hand-eye coordination is getting really good. He can find the tiniest pieces of anything on the floor and get it into his mouth. His favorite is balls of hair. I try to keep the floor clean, but man, he can find anything. The other day he found a lime Skittle that Kaylee left on the floor, and really enjoyed that. At least, I guess that's what happened. All I really know is that I picked him up, he wouldn't eat his bottle (made horrible faces), and then I realized his face was green and he smelled like limes. I can only assume.



And those are our kids. They're great!!

Happy Birthday to me!

I had such a fun birthday this year! We celebrated on Saturday (I'll explain the reason in a minute). Our original plan was to go on a date to Tucano's and probably a few other places, but it ended up being really snowy and cold out, so we decided to stay inside instead. My car is pretty bad in snow and we just didn't want to deal with it. We really need to get new tires.

Will bought me some cooking things for my birthday - that's what I've been asking for lately! Ramekins, a colander (I've dumped far too many noodles and potatoes down the drain...), a pizza cutter (ours just broke and I make pizza a LOT!), and some of those plate/bowl things - I don't know what they're called, but they work really well for things like stir fry and salad, where you don't know if a bowl or a plate would work better. I love cooking...and eating, so I'm excited about them all!

I love having a husband that can cook too, even if it's just a few things. He made me pancakes for breakfast, and cheeseburgers for lunch. I prepared lasagna the day before so I could just stick that in the oven. Then for dessert I'd made a white chocolate raspberry cheesecake. I made it in a water bath for the first time, and it almost turned out perfect. I need to change a couple of things but I'm getting there. Someday I will perfect the cheesecake...

My actual birthday, Sunday, was full of church. Not that that's a bad thing, of course, but....when you're gone because of church for approximately 5 hours, broken up throughout the day from 10am to 7:30pm, it makes it harder to celebrate. So that's why we chose to celebrate on Saturday instead! It was fun at church though, in our ward program they list everyone's birthdays for that week, so I got a LOT of happy birthdays at church! My favorite: Kristin says "Happy Birthday!" and then her 3yo son copies her, and then her 4yo daughter copies him, and they leave. Kaylee stares after them, and I can see the wheels turning. She looks at me and says "Happ-y Birt-day, MOMMY!" Then continued to say it for the rest of the day. Even though she'd heard a bunch of people say it before that, I guess she needed kids close to her age to say it, to realize she was also capable. I've noticed that with her a lot - she refused to ever say "Bye" to anyone, until a little boy a couple months older than her said it. Ever since, she'll say it. Funny stuff!

Will made me a chocolate volcano cake to eat before we left for church at 1. Delicious! I'm so grateful for my wonderful family and everyone that made my birthday special this year. :)

Things I've learned from working on a fixer upper

1. Don't take little things for granted. 
Like baseboards. They're so important. Not to mention ridiculously expensive for hunks of wood, or foam. I never appreciated baseboards at all until we moved in, tore out all of the nasty ones, and still haven't gotten around to replacing them, because there has always been something a little higher on the priority list. But I miss them.

2. Don't buy foam molding.
It's garbage. Unless you expect to glue it in, never touch it, never have anything else touch it, and never take it out. Then you might consider it.

3. Things almost always cost more than you think they will.
There are always other things that pop up. You can't just buy flooring, and put it in. Don't forget that you'll need to pay for trips to the dump for the old flooring, sandpaper to smooth out the sub floor, cleaner because the sub floor is kind of gross, patches for the holes in the sub floor, more sandpaper, spacers, underlayment, and wait...you actually need that silly little tool meant for putting in this flooring? A hammer and block of wood won't work? Drat...
There is, occasionally, an exception, when you think it's going to cost a lot and it doesn't. For me, that's like Christmas coming early.

4. Something will probably run out before you're done.
I learned that I have almost - almost - unlimited amounts of energy for fixing-up projects. A lot of people told me how quickly I was going to get sick of fixing up my house. Nope, I'm not sick of it at all. I can spends hours upon days upon weeks of fixing up and just love it. Only problem is, I need unlimited money, too. So I doubt I'll ever find where my stopping point is, because my money always runs out before my energy.

5. Having the correct tools is very helpful.
That might seem obvious, but how many times have you tried to work on something and thought 'Oh, I can make this do...maybe if I just shove the screwdriver in there a certain way it'll work....' Okay, I don't know - maybe you've never thought that, and you always go to the store and buy exactly what you need, but I don't. I try to make things work with what I have, and a lot of times, that only ends up costing me more time and I have to buy the tool anyway! Sometimes I even have to spend more money than I originally would have, because I mess it up. Those are the really sad times.

6. One trip to to the store while working on a project is never enough.
I always end up going back several times for more of something, or to grab something I forgot. I'm SO lucky that Lowe's is about 3 blocks away from our house. With the way I plan things, I would never get anything done if I had a long drive. I bet my mom plans better than I do, because she lives 30 miles away.

7. Gray is a difficult paint color to choose.
I painted our bedroom three times before I finally settled on a gray I really liked.

8. Don't be scared.
My parents hammered into my head many times to pick a very, very light color for walls. Something that is just barely the color you want, because it always looks darker on the wall. Now there is certainly nothing wrong with light colors. Absolutely not. Many people will give you this advice.
As I picked colors for my house, I brought home lots of very light color samples. I soon found that I really preferred more intense colors. I don't like it to be just barely not white. I believe every single paint sample I brought home, I ended up going a shade or two darker. I wanted a BLUE living room, not a barely-not-white living room.

9.  Sometimes, you really just have to hire a professional.
No matter how handy you are (or think you are), sometimes it has to happen.

New Year's Resolutions

This post is not about THIS years resolutions. I'm horrible at these, actually. I don't think I've ever made a resolution and actually kept it, until last year, and I want to talk about that one today instead.

Last year I made a goal to keep my house cleaner. I've never been a very clean person. When I was a preteen my room was a disaster made up of beads, crafting supplies, clothes, things like that. When I was a teen, I had all those things, plus electronics, a guinea pig, a guitar, etc.

Want to see an embarrassing picture??

Scroll down. :O

This picture was taken of my room when I was going through all my things and packing up to move to UT. Okay, so I had an excuse, because things still get messy when you're going through things. At least, for me they do.

But this is what my room looked like ALL the time a few years back. Actually, it looked worse. I had pictures but I can't find them anywhere. (I must have deleted them out of horror at some point.)

I cleaned my room really well after that, but try as I did, I couldn't keep it clean. For some reason it was basically impossible for me to truly get into the habit of picking up my clothes and putting things away when I was finished with them. Things didn't get a whole lot better after I moved away and got married - I wasn't terrible, but then I had to make meals, go to school full time, and I was pregnant, so keeping the house very clean wasn't reeeeally happening.

Last year, I finally told myself I needed to change my habits. Ironically, I hate messes. I love everything to be nice and clean, I was just...bad at it, I guess. But I really didn't want to be. I wanted to be able to have a clean home, and when it wasn't clean, I wanted to be able to get it clean in a decent amount of time. Like, an hour, instead of a couple of days. I used to have to clean my house for two days before visitors came. Two days.

I think my turning point came when I started feeling a bit embarrassed when people like my visiting teachers dropped by without any notice. I hated feeling like I couldn't take care of the clutter. Also, when we bought a house, that was a huge incentive for me to clean. Not only was our house super gross to begin with, but it was MY house. Not just another rental that I was going to leave in a year. Nope, this time, it was mine, and I wanted to take good care of it and be proud of it.

So I made a chart like this:

 

I pinpointed my difficult spots, such as areas that are clutter-magnets (table, counters, etc) and made sure to clear those regularly. Bedrooms and bathrooms needed more attention than just once a week. Deep cleaning happens once a week, and there are other jobs, like washing dishes, that get done multiple times a day that aren't listed on the chart. Something else that helped me immensely is that my house has 4 storage closets. Makes organization much easier when you actually have a place to organize things! I made sure to have a specific spot for everything.

Is my house always clean? Nope. Sometimes I just can't keep up with everything. I have a hard time when I've got a huge project I'm working on, and I slack on the rest of the house a bit. In fact, I'm working on our bedroom right now and slacking off on other duties a bit. I didn't do much the first two months after Ben was born, either. But I was planning on that. My goal is not perfection. If I do just the pink and green jobs every day (and dishes of course!) then my house looks clean all over. If I miss weekly jobs occasionally, it's no big deal. I'll admit that I'm pretty bad at the monthly jobs, but it's still a work in progress, after all. :) 

So, that is my New Year's Resolution success! I hope next year I have another successful story to share.

I need help!!!

I'm finally redoing our bedroom. I got Christmas money and some Lowe's gift cards, so that's what I chose to do. I'm SO excited about it! I've been wanting to finish it for so long, but I just...haven't. We've been focusing on other things lately, like the basement.

Anyway, I need some help. I was going to do curtains similar to the ones that I did in the basement:

We have small, high windows, so I always just assumed that floor-length curtains, no matter how much I love them, cannot go in our room. I thought it would look super goofy. However, I washed the curtain fabric I bought, and when it came out of the dryer it was still a little damp, so I hung it on the curtain rod in our room to finish drying. It's so long that it looks like a floor-length curtain. And...I kind of like it. It warms up the room and gives it a romantic feel. But I need to know some other opinions because I don't know if I'm just being silly. Here it is:

Of course, it would be on both sides, and probably usually closed. I could put another layer on the back to darken it, which, when it was closed, would just make it look like a large window. I also might raise the curtain rod a bit because it looks a little low to me.

So....opinions?? Do long curtains work on short windows or is this a no-go?

Christmas

We had a GREAT Christmas this year! It was the first year we stayed at home and did our own Christmas. I really prefer the kids being able to wake up in their own beds on Christmas morning. I have a hard time feeling like I can't do things my way for Christmas - not that I'm trying to be a whiny brat, but I have my own ideas and traditions that I want to do with my family, and not be pushed around. But when we go to extended families' houses, they have their own traditions and things they want to do, and I feel compelled to go along with it. So this year, Christmas day was really fun, doing it all my way and not feeling like I need to please other people. Mini rant over. ;)
Kaylee is starting to understand a bit. She understood that the presents were for Christmas day and even though I put them out pretty early we didn't have any problems with her trying to open any.

I would add more pictures of the kids, but I already put them all on Facebook so I don't think I'll bother putting them on this post too!

I'm going to show off some of the homemade gifts I made this year...

This earring and necklace set was for Courtney. The pendant was easy but the earrings took a loooong time and gave me a blister or two! I haven't made jewelry much lately.

These are some of the pajama pants I made for Christmas. The one on the left was Stephanie's, the middle Andy's, and the right, Tim's. I was planning on making them for Tim because we had him for Christmas this year in the sibling exchange, but Andy and Steph's kind of happened by accident. I was at Joann's getting fabric for Tim's, and I was having a hard time finding the right fabric for him. I found a kind I liked a lot, waited in line for about an hour (Saturday afternoon at Joann's - yeah....) and finally went up to get it cut. Right when I got up I realized there wouldn't be enough fabric for the pants. I asked the lady at the counter if I could run and grab a different one while she cut my other fabrics. She said it was fine, so I ran and got bikes. Tim bikes sometimes, so I thought it would work. They somehow looked a little off to me and I just could not figure it out. They didn't look very "Tim." I (somewhat sadly) thought they would work anyway, because I didn't know what else to get. I finished the pants, and then looked at them and just started laughing. They were WOMEN'S bikes. That's what seemed off to me. It was girl fabric. So I decided to give them to Steph because both she and Andy love biking. Back to Joann's I went...I found more of the original fabric that I liked for Tim, so I got that. On my way out (literally, I had paid and left the store), I thought...I really need to make some for Andy. I can't give Stephanie pants and not give Andy any! Back into the store I went (Ben was not very happy about that). I found bright orange with bikes on it and knew it would be perfect for Andy. It all worked out alright. I wanted to give Andy and Steph something anyway because they came to our house for Christmas afternoon. A lot of work, but they all turned out great so I think it was worth it!

I sewed these fun little bean bags for Kaylee with some scrap fabric I had. She's learning shapes so I thought she would enjoy them. No silly stories about these though...

This was Will's idea. He originally wanted me to crochet them, but I didn't think I could do all the details very well, not to mention it would take a long time. I already had fabric in all the right colors, so I decided to sew them. And then about a week before Christmas I decided it would be too much work and I wouldn't make them. Three days before Christmas, Will asked about them and convinced me to just try. I did, and this is what I got! They turned out WAY better than I thought they would. I didn't have a pattern or anything. I'm glad I did it because she loves them!

 A few weeks ago, I made Will a table for his fish tank. Unfortunately, that fish tank got a crack in it (it was plastic) and we needed to replace it. The fish tank size we wanted wouldn't fit on the table I had already built, so for Christmas I bought him a new fish tank and made this table.