Merry Christmas!

Taking a little break from all the festivities today
to wish you all a very Merry Christmas!!!

We have been very busy today making our treats for Santa, decorating gingerbread houses and lots more baking!
Our ham is in the oven, homemade augratins are done. Looking forward to a yummy meal ;)

This week we passed out our neighbor treats: popcorn boxes and bags of Spritz cookies.


Here are the kids today.....trying to keep them busy to help the time pass.



I think the boys ate more than they decorated!
The girls on the other hand...very serious about their houses.

Here's a little look around the house today. I didn't put up hardly any of our decorations this year. With our vacation in the middle of the month we just never quite had the time or energy to go all out.


I got this little village on clearance at Target last year...I love the colors and think it's so cute, and it lights up ;)

Still loving this advent I made a few years back...only one more magnet to go ;)

A close up of the tree. I usually put a berry garland up but opted out this year (remember, not enough energy over here). I love how the tree looks with all it's eclectic ornaments and colors. Lots of wood pieces, all the kids things.....It totally makes me happy to look at. There seems to be a story behind so many of the pieces.


The stockings...waiting patiently to be filled ;)
I love these...I made every single one.
I remember my mom made us stockings like this growing up and it is a cherished item...I wanted my kids to have the same thing.

We may not have decked out the house as much as we usually do but it doesn't seem to matter. I love the spirit I feel this time of year and thinking of Christ is what matters.

Hope you all have a beautiful Christmas!
love Carol

that last post was for Pat, and Jen...THIS ONES FOR YOU!

The WT cabinet.

It's done.

I always thought, once I got started, it would be easier than I thought and I would wonder why I procrastinated so long.

Not true.

I procrastinated for a reason.

But it's done, and I couldn't be happier (well, 98% done)

Just in case (JEN) your planning a similar project, I'll tell you what I did.

First, I filled all the knob holes with wood filler.

Let it dry and sand smooth. Use a putty knife to smooth out and fill in any imperfections. I only did this in the knob area, as I liked the imperfections elsewhere.

I used an electric sander to sand smooth my filler, than did a full sand over the entire piece. Just enough to rough up the surface.

Be sure to wipe clean with a damp cloth and allow to dry.

I painted a layer of primer first.

My girls thought this was the real color and said "oh...that's pretty??"

hahaha!


Then I did a layer of the "real" paint.

I ended up needing to do 2 layers.

I used a small furniture roller, and a brush for the tighter areas.

I then took a piece of sand paper and hand sanded my edges for that distressed look.

My hands got that lovely distressed look as well.

Next we drilled all the new holes for the hardware.

I still need to attach the handles for the middle doors, but I need longer screws than what they came with and I haven't bothered to look for any yet. :)

Last I finished it with a layer of varnish.

And there you go.

It was a. lot. of . work.

I'm so glad it's done

The Living Room

Ya'll know I've been whining for a new couch for my living room...
for like ages!

WELL.
Finally, my dreams have come true.
We saved the money and started looking last fall.

Of course, being picky, like I've been told I am, I couldn't find anything I wanted here in town.
So when we were in Utah for Thanksgiving we went looking up there.
I fell in love at this one store and called Doug on the phone and said he HAD to come see this couch. I wasn't sure he would like it, but baby...I was in lOVE!!!

Being the good husband that he his, he loved it too ;)
So we ordered it and then picked out some chairs together.

While my furniture was on order, I got to painting.
Our downstairs was seriously overdue for a re-paint.

I went with a lovely shade of... mustard.
I've only gotten the living room painted and still have the rest of the downstairs to do.
It will have to wait for a bit, I'm taking a much needed break.

Our furniture came in and Doug and I ran up to Utah to fetch it.

Anyhew....here it is.
I love it.
It makes me happy.
We still want to find a coffee table and possible rug.
We still need to decide what we are putting on the walls.


Looking towards the front of my house.



The big wall, I don't know what to do with.

A not very good close up of the couch.

I couldn't photograph this thing to save my life.

There was always too much light, or not enough.

It's really much darker than it appears in this photo.

And close up of the chairs.

They are wild, and I love them!

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Stay tuned for the infamous cabinet.

I'm pleased as punch!!!

Isn't It Ironic????

That the very morning that my computer crashed I was starting an online account to back up my computer.......

yes, you heard me right.

My computer was NOT backed up.

10,000 + pictures, journals, downloads, actions....not backed up.

I'm an idiot.

I know.

To say I was freaking out was an understatement.

Thankfully, my computer guy came right over and took it away.

He didn't call me for 3 days.

I was resigned to having lost it all.

BUT!!!!

I didn't :)

He did say that had he not gotten it so quickly, when it started to crash...he wouldn't have been able to save it.

BUT HE DID!!!

I'm SO happy.

I've promised the first thing I'm going to do is back it up.

That will be an easy promise to make.

I kinda was freaking out a little.

The other funny thing about that day...

I was needing to turn in a scrapbooking assignment on line...something getting published in a scrap magazine. It was a stressful day.

So I had to install a few programs on my kids computer and start working from here.

Anyhow...because of that I do have a few photos at my fingertips here in the playroom.

SO i'll introduce you to my Christmas present......

Isn't she lovely???

Our playroom has looked like a trashed college dorm room for over 5 years.

I was over it.

We'd always talked about doing this in here...but just never got around to it, never felt we could afford it.

But now we had Ikea up the road and I was certain we could come up with something affordable.

I never dreamed it would be this fantastic!

I'm soooooo happy.

Everything fits!

Everything is organized, off the floor, out of plastic buckets

off old rickety book shelves.

We even were able to move a lot of stuff from another shelf downstairs that we are getting rid of. We freed up space in our linen closet.

I could go on and on!

Then we got an nice new desk for the computer.

Popped it with these shnazzy red chairs.

Found these awesome cloth covered buckets from Home Goods for a lovely price!

They hold gobs of toys and come in several sizes.

This big one here...it's got ALL the little people stuff (excluding the big sets obviously!)

I plan on buying just a couple more.

Found this clock at HomeGoods too.

We moved our old couch from the living room up here and put

a classy slip cover on it.

Also found this shaggy yellow pillow at HOmeGoods.

The space above the couch will hold a large canvas

print of the fam...if I ever get around to ordering it!

Will also add some new photos to the self.

Here is Kristen's little school corner.

This was the of much concern to her when we

took everything in the room apart.

Where???? was here stuff going to be??

All I need to to do now is make some cute valances...that is when I find that perfect fabric!

We are also thinking of getting a big rug for the room to finish it off.

That will come when the perfect one comes along!

*****************************************************************

If you've made it this far in the post...than thank you!

You are a survivor!

Hoping to get my computer back soon, back it up

and start printing some of those pictures! :)

Happy Friday...think we will be seeing The Lovely Bones tonight.

i totally forgot...

I totally forgot about Nathans room reveal
until a little someone :) reminded me of it today.
I guess since it's not quite done, I forgot.
So here it is.
I LOVE how the paint job turned out.
Love the colors we went with.
Now those, I had trouble deciding on.
And as it was, i was worried until it was done
whether or not I would like the blue.
The orange is perfect! Just the right color.
The stripe is *&%itchin!

I love how it looks with the bedding (from CB2)

It's all so grown up looking, in a teenagerish sorta way.


Here is the desk and shelving unit we bought at Ikea.

(actually its probably best that I didn't post this right away, cause my anger with Ikea has waned)

My complaint with them is this (and you out a town shoppers....listen up!)

So we bought everything, transported it home, finished up the room and THEN opened up the boxes. The bookshelf...had a HUGE hole on one of the beams. Now understand, we were putting it all together that night. We were READY to finish up the room.

No can do now. We need to get this replaced. So I scour the online sight looking for assistance. Sent an email to cust. serv. The next day get a response telling me I have to contact the store I bought it at. So I do. Tell them we need a new part or set sent to us. They seem to ignore the fact that I told them I live 6 hours from the store and made the trip up just to do our shopping. They happily said "we're so sorry for the inconvenience (sappy sappy sappy) just return it to the store and we'll be happy to replace it for you". Um....didn't you hear me! I can't just return it!!!! You need to mail it to me, whatever.

"Maam...we can't do that. You have to bring it in." arrrggggggghhhhhhhh.....

there were some other suggestions made, but nothing that worked so to make a longer story shorter here's the gist of it....

I said FORGET IT! "Doug! just put it together as is and we'll make sure that big ol' hole is in the back! It just wasn't worth a trip up just to replace it and we weren't going back up to Utah in the time the receipt would require the return.

So to top off the bookshelf disaster....the cute wood boxes we saw (& bought) on display with (what we thought was our shelf) don't fit! Too big. To say we were livid with it all was an

understatement. So instead of the cool boxes he now has a few plastic buckets instead...arrrgggghh.

So there is my consumer warning....if you purchase from them, you better check your stuff before you leave town. Even though they ship, they WILL NOT if you purchased in store!

So anyway...here is the shelf and desk. It really is a great system for him. I wanted so bad to get my hands on it and arrange it but it's his. He wanted to do it himself. See that big ol' junk bucket up there (he's never gonna sort through)...i so would have put that down under the desk! And he was way excited to finally have a place to display is growing array of trophy's!

We haven't put up any decor yet, though I have some huge magnet boards I'm gonna repaint and put up. We also have this awesome little crewel work piece from my mom that matches perfectly. It's totally from the 70's...she recently framed it up nice and gave it to him. Cute hu.

I love that he got out his Jesus picture and put it smack dab in the middle of his desk.

We've had to remove the closet organizer in his room to repair it so his closet is completely thrown up all over the place. His nice new room has pretty much been a disaster since we put it together!

Oh my gosh, this was a super long boring post for a room reveal!

If your still here, thanks!

ps...i leave for St. George (1 1/2 hrs from Vegas)....in 3 days!!!

if i could type the sound that being giddy makes....i SO would!

Hangin' at the Homestead

Jack and I are just hangin' at home today...of course.
He wanted to pull out every pop up we had (which is just a few)
He tried out the basketball one and said
"i'm not winning the basketball!"
he got tired of that so we moved on to


the Jack in the box pop up! with tunnels. He is in the same pajamas he wore all day yesterday too. Don't judge me...at least he has clothes on. It's usually nothing.

After this he settled into a little Po of Kung Fu Panda.

On to the next thing...Sorry I forgot I never posted the final of Jacks room.

So da da da da........presenting....the little green room.

Just the bunk beds, a rug, and his train table.

This is the only artwork in the room. I kinda like it really simple and clean.

Besides that fact that there isn't much available wall space anyway.

I did buy some little doggy hooks from Ikea that I need to put up...somewhere.

Here is a closer up look at the t-shirts. I love how random they are and that I can change them out whenever I come across something I like better.

The orange wording says "I'm kind of a big deal" from the Anchorman movie. Love it.

As for Nathans makeover...the room has no new paint yet. I'm dying to get started and bum or no bum I am determined to get started by this weekend. Hey, I can stand.

But here is a little sneaky peak of his color scheme.

Now lets top off this random post with a layout of Jack at the beach last year.

I'm really dying to be productive...ahem.....in a crafty way.

DRUM ROLL PLEASE....

We finally finished the girls room!

Samantha's bed

Kristen's bed

Even though they have day beds i have decided to go with the traditional line up of pillows. Their last set had ALL the pillows going across the back of the bed and quite frankly, that's just TOO MANY FREAKIN' PILLOWS. I couldn't take it anymore.

Now if your thinking, gosh what a cute, CLEAN room, just wait a second...

here are the photography conditions I was working with

Maybe I should have just let you think that we live in a gorgeous, spotless house. But that would be a LIE! There book shelf is A MESS. No matter how many times I clean it and tell them to leave it like that, they quickly put their little (messy) touches all over it. I want to paint the shelf again, but can't quite decide how. Brown? Or is that too much? Maybe just the roof?

The girls and I did work on a little art project for their room together. We made some paper owls and a bird to mount on canvas and frame. Pretty, Pretty, Pretty happy with how they turned out. Giddy is more like it!

They each designed their own owls and helped put them together. We mod podged them onto canvas that I cut down to fit the frame. I had these old Pottery Barn Artwork frames that were missing the plexi glass. I painted them brown, sanded them and attached ribbon (Martha Stewart ribbon) and hung them from these little flowers I bought at Tai Pan in Utah. We still need to hang the last flower to get the set up (ran out of screws).

Samantha's Owl, my bird

Kristen's owl

We are also wanting to make these cute little owls pillows from Pottery Barn together. That will make a good fall/winter sewing project for us girls! I ordered some cute fabrics from Heather Bailey I think will mix well with the fabrics that I used on their other pillows.

(isn't this room to DIE for????) seriously, if i didn't already have their room done I be SO tempted to splurge on this set. But i know the set they have will grow with them a little better.

And there you have it. The room!

The Girls Room

Finally getting the girls room together. For some reason it had been driving me crazy for quite some time. It was the same theme it had been since Kristen was born with things added along the way. It had it's cute day, butterflies, flowers and stuff, all pastels. But these two girls were over it. So was I.

Came across some fabulous bedding earlier this year and talked my girls into loving it as much as I did! Brown, robins egg blue, dirty pink, orange, green, cream...all so yummy. Kinda like some awesome scrap paper as one friend said. The best thing, it was affordable. So we bought the bedding, the paint, found some fabrics to include for pillows and curtains...then let it all sit for MONTHS. Then one day I woke up and announced that that was the day to paint! "Girls, get your room cleaned! I'm painting today!" (I'm kinda like that, I'll suddenly get an idea, and by golly I want it done right now!)

(the lighter pink is the old color...close I know...but different enough to warrant it :)
So, for 3 (or 4) days, I painted, after spending the morning at swim lessons of course. I was really worried about the stripe. Never done that before. Heck, could never even get the ceiling line straight before. And here I was attempting a stripe. Crazy, I know! But I gave it my all and it worked out. Yippee Skippee. I practically jumped for joy when I started pulling tape off.

Samantha really wanted the whole room to be blue, but I worried it would feel to dark and of course Kristen, she wanted it pink. So we came up with the border idea.

Jack...he was BIG helper let me tell you!

Here's a little teaser of the bedding along with the pillows I made. The curtains are out of the brown floral eyelet. Haven't finished the curtain rods yet so when they are up I'll post the whole room. We also need to to paint their bookshelf, thinking of doing it in brown. So giddy about the different textures I was able to add to the bedding.

A couple of new nic nacs to add to the yummy Robbin's egg blue.

And yes, the girls LOVE their new room and I think it feels a bit more mature, something they can grow into for a bit.