Dress to skirt

Here is our guest/craft room.


I figured since I was going to be taking pics of the skirt in here, I would show you where I was working.

Ok. So I have had this dress for years, and this is a terrible pic. I only just noticed, and the skirt is done, so there ya go. It was long, shapeless, and out of date but had a cute print. I wanted some new springy skirts to I raided my closet for possibilities. This made the cut!

I measured where I wanted the skirt to hit, leaving an allowance for a ruffle on the bottom. I cut the top off the bottom.

With the top, I cut lengths of fabric 4 inches wide for the ruffle. I didn't know how many I would need, so I just cut up the whole top.

I sewed the 4 inch strips together, guessing at the length I would need. I think I did about 1 1/2 the width of the skirt.

Then I did a gathering stitch on the end. Oh, first I hemmed one rough edge. I gathered the other rough edge. I don't have a pic of this, but then I pinned and sewed the ruffle to the bottom of the skirt.
With the left over strips, I decided to put a ruffle on the skirt. I cut them in half, then zigzagged the edges in blue thread. This would have been easier with a serger!

Then I pinned the ruffle on the skirt. I put it on one side.

I sewed the ruffle down both sides with the same blue thread I edged it with.

Made a place for elastic.


Here is the finished product. I am so happy with it! The ruffle I put on it is hard to see in the pic, but it is super cute. I like how the ruffle on the bottom turned out too. This was only $1.29 for the elastic. Pretty thrifty! And now I have a new skirt for spring and summer!

Ninnyisms

"My finger hurts! My mouth bit it!"

Happy Easter!

We had a very nice Easter. On Saturday, we took the girls to a great egg hunt where they came home with a good number of eggs filled with candy. I was worried that they wouldn't get much. We have been to some where they are lucky to come away with one. This one was great! They even had the Easter bunny. Michaela made sure to move away from the camera; she is getting too old for bunnies!





Sunday, we woke up and had lemon ricotta pancakes and the girls got baskets from Grandma.

Then they opened the ones from us.

Ninny got a new baby doll, she was very happy about it.

One of my favorite parts of Easter is seeing all my girls lined up at church in new dresses.

I bought little gloves for the younger two, and then left them at home! They put them on for pictures at home, though.



Then we had an egg hunt in our yard with our real eggs.

Me and Michaela.

The weather was so nice!

Then my mom and I cooked for two hours, and we had a yummy dinner. Gene and Marlene came down for dinner, and also brought the girls baskets.

Mmmmm, chocolate truffle cake.

A great Easter. I am so grateful for the opportunity to have a day to celebrate the Resurrection and what it means for us as families. We had a great talk in Sacrament meeting today about the time line of Jesus' last days. It was humbling to listen to his sacrifice and suffering and to know he did it for me. We also had a fantastic musical number in Relief Society that brought tears to my eyes as I thought of what He went through. I know we fill much of the holiday with bunnies and candy, but more importantly it gives us a chance to ponder the Atonement and renew our convictions to live worthy of his sacrifice. I love Easter.

Sweet Dreams, Smarty Pants

Corrine lately has been having nightmares. I remember my other children begin to have them at about the same age. After a few months, they seem to taper off.

Last night, she was crying for me, so I went in and found her sitting up in bed, saying there were bugs and mud on her bed. (No, she didn't have any meth before bedtime!)

I picked her up, comforted her and said it was just a dream. I was hesitant to try to explain to her about that, we had never talked about dreams before and that is a difficult concept for a two year old to grasp. She just nodded and we cuddled.

As I put her back to bed, she said something that let me know she had been processing what I said and putting two and two together.

She said "Mom, dreams disappear and go away," while making a "poof" and gone gesture with her little chubby hand.

I hadn't said that to her, those were her words. Amazing. I didn't even know she understood the concept of disappear.

Here I was witnessing her comprehension of a very abstract concept.

Then she said that a giant sometimes came to her dreams.

So sad. Broke my heart, but at the same time, I am sitting here thinking," I am having the most amazing conversation with my little smarty pants at 2 in the morning. "

She goes on to explain a little more to me about her dreams, and chats with me a bit. I kiss her head, and say,"Dreams can be good too. You can dream about a big ice cream, or playing at the park, or making cookies with Mommy. Go back to sleep and dream good dreams."

I am so amazed at her thought processes at such a young age. Maybe it comes from being the fourth child and having the influence of 3 older sisters, but this little one is smart.

Easter Fun and a Cool Tan Line

Easter is kind of sneaking up on me. I really hadn't thought much about it until this week. I think it is because we are not hosting a big family dinner! For FHE, Payden did an Easter lesson (I hadn't even thought of it!) and on a whim I decided to make paper mache eggs like we did last year. It was fun, and Corrine did really well with it. It was so cute watching her try to get the tissue paper off her gluey fingers!


Ava, on the other hand, has been anticipating Easter and is very excited for it. She made herself into a little bunny by putting on all white clothes and drawing a face on with marker.

And what do you get when you spend an hour on a beautiful Saturday afternoon running?

An IPOD armband tan line, thats what. Can you see it? Its pretty faint, but its there. Cool!

Some pics of our house

Sooo, this isn't the whole house, but its a start. The rest wasn't very tidy, so I will get those later.

Here is the kitchen. Lots of space, I love it. Of course, if we buy the house, I will redo it, but its ok right now. It does need all new appliances, and not just for asthetics. The microwave is touchy, the fridge is all beat up, and the oven is almost as bad. But, I love all the space. I was worried about the tiny island, but it actually has lots of counter space.

One great thing about this kitchen, it has a spot to catch clutter that is not really visable! There is this little "hidden" counter next to the fridge. Joy. That is where all my counter clutter goes.Ha, ha, now I am showing you a pic of my counter clutter. Awesome. Also, it has a nice deep farm style sink. I can fit a lot of dirty dishes in there without anyone seeing them!


Here is the garage door. Off to the right is the pantry, the left is a half bath.

The bath.

The pantry. Is. Huge. I love it. One one side, I have hooks hung for coats and backpacks. One downside of this house; there is no coat closet. At all. So our coats and shoes go in the pantry!

The other side is used for what it is supposed to be for!

Here is a shelf I had Jason make for me, and I finished. He did a great job; I love it!

Here is the living room, open to the kitchen. I made the curtains, and would like some honest feedback. They look to wimpy to me. I didn't want them to be too wide. There are too many windows and not enough wall space for wide, but they still look too wimpy. What do you think?

You can see in the bottom right of this photo that we have the computer desk in here. The only place for it. I spend too much time there now, as its right next to the kitchen. Oh,well!

Here is the litte room off the front door we call the piano room. Not very big, but it is nice to have a separate place for the piano. This room also has french glass doors.

When you walk in, there is no entry way, which bothered me at first. I just put my entry table in the piano room. Works. There is kind of a split level right here, with stairs going up, and stairs going down.


What is left is the downstairs, which has the two older girls rooms and the guest room and a bathroom. Upstairs is the little girls rooms, their bathroom, laundry, and our master. When I get pics of those, I will post!

Flowers for mom

All my girls have brought me flowers when they were little. Ava is no different, but her presentation is! Here is her latest creation; all the yellow flowers in the middle surrounded by the purple ones. She brings me flowers just about every time she goes outside. So sweet.

Our master bedroom

We got our master all done! Painted, decorated, and cleaned of clutter. I love it!

Here is a pic from the closet. Which is huge, but a mess, so no pic. I made the curtains. Jason found the fabric on clearance for $8, so you are looking at $8 dollar curtains, baby! We already had the rod. Gotta love it. I know this isn't the best pic, I should have shut the window. I'll take one at night so you can see them better. They are white.

Here is the view out my dirty window. Golf course with mountains in the background. Gorgeous. We have the pleasure of listening to all the wildlife that inhabits the wetlands; lots of birds, cicadas, frogs. It sounds so nice!

Here is what I did on my ceder chest; that is my great grandmothers little suitcase. I was going to put it in storage, where it has been for years, but it looked good sitting out. I used to use this to put my color crayons in when I was young.

I am so excited about how the wall above the bed turned out. The frames are all white and distressed. I will add to the wall as I find interesting frames. I would like some oval or circle ones, and some really chunky ones.

I also recovered all my decorative pillows. I had bought a vintage table cloth a while ago, and used that on three of the pillows. The yellow one is an old napkin, with pieces of the table cloth.

I absolutely love our room. I just need to make something to cover up the end of the bed where the comforter doesn't quite reach, and I'll be done. I do want to make a new bedspread, I have a plan in mind but I don't know when I will start it. It will be white, though, kind of like an Anthropology one I saw.

Refurbished Sofa Table

I found this vanity at a yard sale for $5. It was just the right width for a sofa table, and I have always wanted a sofa table, so I snatched it up. It has sat in the garage for a while, but I finally got it going!

I didn't take pics during, I should have because it was funny! You can see that some kid wrote all over it, and some of it was written in fingernail polish. That stuff did not want to sand off. Also, the top of this thing is some kind of wood/plastic combo, and THAT wouldn't sand off, either. I started off sanding the whole thing, as good as I could. Then I painted the whole thing white, and gave is some sanding to distress it. I didn't like it. It looked like something you would put in a baby's room, too bright white. It needed some dimension. Also, that pink showed through some, and also this must have been green at some time because I had some green showing through as well.

I thought I would try wiping some dark stain on then wiping it off for the dimension I wanted. This worked on the real wood parts, but that top didn't look right. As soon as the stain got on, it wasn't budging. I thought, I am going to have to paint the whole thing white again, so why not cover it with stain, then paint, then sand?

If any of you have done this before, please don't laugh at me! This was my first attempt at something more than just painting and distressing. I was having fun though!

So I did the stain, then I brushed the paint on kind of patchy like, not full coverage. This was the only way I could get the top to look right, since it wouldn't sand off. Then I distressed it just a little, and bought new clear knobs for the front.

So here is the before...

And the after....




What do you think? I like it. I kind of wish I had sanded down a little more, but I was worried that pink and green paint would show itself again. I will take pics with it all decorated.



Some of you have asked to see pics of the house; they are coming. I wanted to finish some decorating first. I am going to take pics this weekend.

Nine out of ten dentists recommend....

I like the kid shows on Nick, at least the ones for little kids. I hate the teen ones, but I will get to that in another post. The young kids shows aren't bad. They are cute, innocent, and most often educational in some way.

Doesn't replace a parent's teaching, but that again is another post!

What I don't like about it is the commercials. They have commercials in between shows, and sometimes they aren't even directed at kids but the parents they suppose are sitting watching with their children.

Disney doesn't have those commercials, I wish Nick was the same. I thought that the commercials for toys would be the ones I would have to content with, but I was wrong.

In Walmart yesterday, we were getting Ava some new toothpaste. I had already put her normal kind, Crest for Kids, in the cart. She points at one and says,
"Mommy, I want that one!"

"I already got you some. Look, its here in the cart."

"Noooooo!" (Begins to have a minor meltdown) "The TV says that this one cleans the best!"

Well.

I had to explain to her that commercials always make things sound better than they are, in an attempt to get you to spend your money on them. I assured her that any toothpaste is going to do an equal job.

I am not sure she believed me, but she gave up the fight about the toothpaste.

Perfect Color

Our bedroom was this awful mix of colors; one deep burgundy color, one a gold tan, and two builder white walls. I cringed every time I went in there. Usually, I try to keep our room clutter and toy free; a serene place. It was that way in Idaho, but when we moved to Utah our large master in our last house seemed to appropriate everything that didn't otherwise have a place to go. In this house, the bedroom is even bigger, and the same thing was happening to a lesser degree. In getting the rest of the house put in order, I would just carry things I didn't know what to do with upstairs to our room. It also held all the pictures that would eventually go in there. The problem was those awful walls. I just couldn't get motivated to declutter or hang pictures when the backdrop was so horrible; it wouldn't be serene or relaxing. So even though this is a rental ( we love it and still want to buy it, our fingers are crossed!) we decided it would be worth it to paint.

I read a blog that has the most amazing color on her walls; Comfort Gray from Sherwinn Williams. That was my color. Jason stopped buy and picked up a color sample, and I got all confused. You know how they have a darker color on the bottom, then the color gradually gets lighter and lighter towards the top? Well, Comfort Gray was right in the middle....of a lot of green. I had thought the color was a gray with blue undertones, but it was green. I didn't want green, I wanted more of a blueish. So we went back to the store, picked out two colors that I thought would work, got samples of them, and went home and put them on the wall.

LIke I said, this room has three different colors on the walls. This made if VERY confusing to tell what the colors would look like. They looked different on each wall! The lighter color looked to me too blue, not enough gray and maybe even a hint of lavendar. NOT what I wanted. The darker color looked straight gray, no blue at all; depressing.
Here they are on the white wall,

Here they are on the burgandy wall and the gold tan wall.

After agonizing over them, I decided that neither color was the one, and just stuck to my original color, comfort gray. We bought it, and started painting. It was looking minty green! AAaaaah! Oh well, I thought, it will be an improvement over what it was, at the very least. But, as it started to dry, it looked less and less green. When we got all the tape off the walls, it looked even better. Then, this morning, I woke up to this:

I don't know what this looks like on your screen, and I apologize for the messy room, but it is the perfect color for me! It dried to a bluish gray, just like I wanted. I am in love.

Here is a pic of it in natural light, no flash. Next up, decorating. I am going to make some curtains and I have a neat idea for the wall above the bed. Sooooo glad we did this, I no longer cringe when I walk in. I smile!