NO TIME!

This is a post to say that I KNOW I really need to catch up... but I have NO TIME!!!!! I will try to be back SOON!!!!!

Master, before and afters

Before

And after!

I textured and painted the walls, made the drapes, and made the duvet cover and bed skirt and pillows. I don't love the wreath. It worked well in Boise when we had a vaulted ceiling in our bedroom but here, it's too low. I'm going to make an upholstered headboard at some point but this will work for now.

I LOVE this linen fabric I found for the drapes!

Close up of the pillows. (I'm going to put some decorative buttons on the tabs of the back pillows, but haven't found the right ones yet.

And this is the big blank wall in the room. Any ideas on what I can do with it? I'm at a total loss.

Ok, I'm ready...

...ready to start couponing that is. I have friends who find incredible deals and while I didn't want to take the time to do it and organize all of those coupons and such, I'm really trying to do my part to help us get some of these student loans paid down.

So, give me all of your tricks and tips! Anyone do this regularly? Where do I start!?

And for another quick update, I'm so excited to announce... I got a vinyl cutter!!! Yay! Again, keeping with the theme of trying to get us out of debt. :-) So, if anyone needs anything, or knows of those who do, let me know! I'm going to get a blog up soon of my projects and what is available but I haven't had time for that lately. Why you ask, well, the decided to make me Primary President! That's right. Crazy! We had been here for 2 weeks when they put me into cub scouts. Then, 3 weeks later, they put me in as 1st counselor in the primary presidency. Then, our Stake decided to take our pres. to the Stake Young Women's so they reorganized us again and I got to take the Pres. spot. I had been here for just under 3 months and our primary program was the NEXT WEEK! (that was 2 days ago) It went really well considering and I'm glad it's over. This is going to be challenging but really fun I think. Any tips on that would be great too. :-)

My cute Jaron

Every day after lunch, Jaron takes a nap and he always goes down really well. Today, I was washing off his hands and face and I said, "Guess what time it is!" Jaron looked at me and said, "ummmmmm, 10 o'clock." LOL Remember, he isn't even 2.5 yet. It was so cute. I said, "no, it's nap time." And he said, "nooooo, it's 10 o'clock." And then gave me a big grin. Oh it was adorable.

More from Megan

I've been painting my master bedroom and Megan sits on the bed and talks to me as I go. Here was our conversation just a few minutes ago. :-)

Megan: "Mom, how do you make paint?"

Mom: "I don't make it, I go to the store and buy it."

Megan: "How do they make paint?"

Mom: "They mix some stuff together and add color and you have paint."

Megan: "You wanna know how they make it?"

Mom: "Sure."

Megan: "First they take some vinegar, then they add paint sauce, then they add color and then it's paint. Now do you know how to make it, since I told you?"

Mom: "Yup. Thanks Meg."

:-P

Oh the joys of buying an old house... FLOOD!

Last week we had a ton of fun at our local street festival, only to come home to a water heater that went out and had been continuously dumping hot water all over our basement. Lovely. We got it turned off and as much water sucked out with our shop vac (thank you for the Christmas gift honey!) and the next day the disaster relief people showed up and set up a dehumidifier and 6 fans that proceeded to create a wind tunnel in our basement for the next 4 days.

It's amazing what we've learned through all of this:

Lesson 1 ~ Carpet in the family room and vinyl in the storage room now needs to be replaced

Lesson 2 ~ $1000 homeowners insurance deductible sounds great to reduce your monthly premium but hurts when you have to make a claim

Lesson 3 ~ Homeowners insurance won't cover a broken down water heater but will cover the damages it causes

Lesson 4 ~ Home warrantee that came with the house won't cover damages but will cover a new water heater

Lesson 5 ~ Whoever installed the old water heater had no clue what they were doing and didn't do it up to code so we have had carbon monoxide leaking into our home every time the water heater fired up. That's right, the DEADLY poisonous carbon monoxide.

So, all in all, this was a HUGE blessing that we had this flood. We now have a working water heater that is SAFE and won't cause serious harm or DEATH. We are also picking out new flooring for our basement and we get to have the "cat" smell GONE! Yay!

I'm tired. :-)

Finished the chairs

My latest project. Recovering the dining room chairs. Luckily, when I recovered them 3 years ago, I had bought enough fabric to be able to do them all again. I loved it so yay, no need to buy something new. Stacy had just recovered hers and added a layer of plastic on top and it was such a brilliant idea with children that I just had to copy her. Thanks for the idea!

First day of school 2009

Kyle and Dallin started 3rd and 1st grades today. Holy cow am I old enough to have kids that old!? Because they are expanding the school they will be going, the Kindergarteners and 1st graders are at the old school down the street for the first month so they can't go together yet but Dallin is doing really well with that. I thought he'd be more nervous. We went and registered on Monday and found their classrooms but the teachers were all in a meeting so Drostan took them to meet their teachers yesterday. I think it really helped calm them both and just get them excited.

Oh, and we also had the moose back this morning. :-) I think they like us.

NO sugar for a month... day 1

My eating has been pretty bad lately. I've been focused on other things and my health is suffering for it. I've decided to start with cutting out all extra sugar/sweets for a month. I've decided this means white bread (which we don't eat anyway), treats (ice-cream, crackers and such), and breakfast cereals (I'm a sucker for these!) I'm going to try to drastically increase the amount of veggies I am eating and see how this goes. I'm only a couple of hours into day 1 and it's amazing how much my body is craving something to snack on. I'm off to the store to stock up on lots of veggies, chicken breasts, and fish!

Update:

Don't start a challenge like this unless you have gone to the store and found things you CAN eat to have in your house. It will go over much better. :-P

Morning surprise in the back yard

Drostan came running into our room this morning to wake me up yelling, "twin moose in our back yard!!!" I jumped out of bed, ran down and got the kids and this is what we got to see!

Visitors from Boise!

We love it when friends come to visit. Drostan's best friend and hunting buddy, Trevor came over for the weekend with 2 of his girls. His wife and baby were in Seattle visiting her sister and their oldest was with Grandma so he took the opportunity with the middle 2 girls to come for a visit. You'd have thought they hadn't seen each other in YEARS! lol Drostan and Trevor were so excited to see each other. We had so much fun playing in the yard, catching snakes and bugs, hiking in the mountains, and gathering rocks for our new fire pit. Thank you Trevor so much for helping with that! There is nothing like true friends. Now we just need to get the whole family over here so I can play with Jocelyn! :-)

We have Poop!

Jaron is only 2 yrs 3 months old. I've never tried potty training before 2.5 but Drostan decided to put him on the potty the other day and he peed a bit so, I guess we're kind of starting. So this morning I was about to get him dressed and I asked him if he wanted to sit on the potty. He usually poops in the morning (I know, you all wanted to know that) so I sat him down, he proceeded to push and poop, right then! Yay! This is awesome!!!! Don't know if this will go anywhere but hey, at least we have a success before we have an accident!

(sorry, no pics with this post) :-P

More finished projects!!!

Kitchen/Dining before:

And after!

I couldn't deal with the carpet in the dining room so I ripped it up and put down the tiles the week before Drostan moved over. I also textured all of the walls in the upstairs and just love how the red turned out!

They don't have any mailboxes on our street...you have to make your own. Others have gotten old tires or wooden flower boxes and cemented the post into that. This is what I found at a garage sale and I love it!

Here is the last closet that I redid in the basement. It used to be an old dark room (for photography). It's 5'deep by 11'wide. Now, it's an awesome storage room! I found carpet tiles and put them down over the existing asbestos floor.

To the right before and after:

To the left before and after:

Straight on before and after:

And my favorite project so far has been to find a fix for this crazy tiny bathroom off of our laundry room. It's a full bath and REALLY tight. I ripped out the old sink, textured all the walls, repainted, and found this great side table at IKEA and cut a whole in it to drop this sink in. Now I'm on the search for a perfect mirror. Because of the plumbing underneath, it couldn't be centered under the light so I'm trying to figure out how I should center the mirror. Probably under the light but any ideas are welcome!

Before:

After!!!

Summer Fun!

Thought I'd catch up on some of the pictures in my camera.

We'll start with my silly little "medical emergency". lol It was about a week before Drostan came out and somehow, I jammed my thumb up under the counter and got a huge sliver under my nail! It was about 1/4 of the way down under the nail bed and it was throbbing like crazy. We had no tweezers (I have since purchased 2!) and the only medical type person I could think of was the dentist that Drostan is replacing. So I called him and he had me meet him at the office and he numbed up my thumb and was able to fish it out. Man that thing hurt SO badly!

We have had a lot of fun too. The kids and Drostan have been having so much fun in the yard with the sprinklers and enjoying the week off between offices.

We've been having the kids dig a fire pit in the back, undeveloped area. It is going... slowly at best so Drostan got frustrated and finished digging it the other day. lol When we get some rocks and logs and stuff back there to sit on, I'll post some pics of it finished.

My parents came for a visit and while they were here, we found a broken "something" in our sprinkler system. My sweet Dad offered to help Drostan dig out the mud and try to figure out what it was. It was a much bigger job than they thought but they found a few things they could fix and hopefully, things are good now.


We drove up to Lower Mesa Falls and Big Springs one afternoon.


And went for a quick hour long fishing venture just up the road at the Fall River. Yes, Mom was the only one to catch anything. lol Even if it was only a minnow.

And in our back yard, the kids, well, mainly Dallin, have had a blast finding "creatures". Lovely! Dallin is our little creature catcher. He found 2 snakes and several crickets. Poor Jaron thought that he had caught something too. He raised up his fist and said, "I caught one!" Then he said "OUCH, it bit me!" and he through it down on the ground and we saw the bee that he had caught. He pulled the stinger out himself and never even cried. Tough kid! They did have a fun time picking a ton of raspberries. Enough for a yummy pie!