Christmas Came Early

Today my kids were surprised with an early Christmas present:

His name is Roofy and so far he's been the center of attention. The kids were so excited to finally get a dog.  They absolutely love him.  He's so cuddly, and loves to play and give kisses.  What's not to love :)  Merry Christmas early!

Christmas Countdown

I'm so excited about this project.  Every December my family likes to pick a different Christmas story to read each night.  I wanted to incorporate this tradition into a Christmas countdown.  Here's what we came up with:

We collected 24 different Chrismas stories and found an ornament to go along with each story.  Each night in December we'll read a Christmas story and put the ornament up on the tree, counting down to Christmas.

I didn't take pictures along the way, but the tree was cut out of a piece of 3/4 inch MDF.  It's 6 feet tall and I was able to fit 2 trees on one MDF board by flipping one upside down.  I was super proud of myself because it's the first time I ever used a jigsaw.  After sanding the trees I primed them and spray painted them in an Italian Olive color by Krylon.  I added hooks that just screwed into the trees to hang the ornaments on.  Finally I added a vinyl number under each hook to countdown to days until Christmas.  We'll start by adding the ornaments to the bottom and working our way up.  Once the tree is full of ornaments Chrismas will be here.

Picture Projects

I love pictures! I love seeing the faces of my family around my home, but just putting a picture in a frame and hanging it on the wall can get a little old, so I've been trying out some new ways to display our pictures.

This first one is a black and white photo mod podged onto a wooden board that was painted black and distressed.  I love it displayed on a stand.

I also did up an antiqued picture of the temple my parents were married in with their wedding date the same way.  I originally saw this idea at http://www.lilluna.com/.  She's got lots of temple pictures already distressed and free for your own personal use.  You can also add whatever saying or words you want to them. Go check it out.

Next, I used some of my left over wood blocks and created some photo blocks with pictures of the kids on them.

And the last project was a set of coasters.  I mod podged the pictures to the tiles, then added a piece of felt to the back.  I put a few layers of mod podge over the top of the pictures to protect them since they would be holding drinks.  These are my kids favorites.  They've already tried them out.

Halloween

Halloween is always a fun holiday.  Our celebrations started out on Saturday by carving a few pumpkins.

SnowWhite

Spider

Clown

Monster

Tinkerbell

We also painted a few:

On Sunday we went to my Mom and Dad's for a costume party and dinner.  The kids loved seeing all their cousins dressed up:

Monday Cody and Whitney dressed up for school, but their school does things a little differently.  They have a Classical Characters Assembly and anyone that wants to dress up has to dress up as a historical figure or a character from a classical book.  Cody went as a Hobo and Whitney was Pippy Longstocking.

We finally wrapped up the day with a little trick-or-treating.  The weather was great which made it so much fun!

Cody remained a Hobo, Whitney transformed into Smurfette, Hailee was a cheerleader and Jaxon was the star of the football team!  Happy Halloween!

Our Disneyland Trip

A few weeks ago we took our two oldest children to Disneyland and had a blast.  My 7 year old rode a number of rides for the first time including the Tower of Terror, Splash Mountain and Space Mountain.  My 10 year old also experienced a few rides for the first time.  It was his first time riding Indiana Jones and Screamin' in California Adventure.  We spotted a few characters along the way and let my daughter wait in line to see the princesses.  Here are a few pictures from the happiest place on earth.

We had so much fun and can hardly wait until our two youngest are old enough to take along.  I love seeing how excited the kids get, especially when they are experiencing everything for the very first time :)

Family Pictures

Last week we had my sister take some family pictures for us.  She did a fabulous job.  I love the way they turned out, they look great!  Thanks Ty! :)

Halloween Projects

My kids have loved helping me get ready for Halloween.  Here are a few of the projects we have been busy working on:  We started out painting some wooden blocks and of course Hailee and Jaxon wanted to help with the painting.

We turned the blocks into a mummy, Frankenstein, and a Jack-O-Lantern to go on our front table.

Here they are on our table:

We still thought the table needed a little something more, so we make a "SPOOKY" banner to drape across the front:

The last project, but not final project, I've been working on is a Smurfette Costume for my daughter.

Halloween is such a fun time of year.  It's always fun to see what the kids want to be for Halloween and see how excited they get for the holiday :)

Jewelry Rack

I didn't take any pictures along the way, but this one was pretty easy.  I had this board laying around so I primed it and spray painted it.  I thought it looked a bit plain though so I taped some off and spray painted a few stripes.  Once it was all dry I used spray glue to adhere a ribbon down the center.  The final step was to drill some holes (which I had my dad do for me) then screw in some knobs.  Now I have lots of places to hang up jewelry, belts, scarves etc.

FAMILY wooden blocks

I've got a table in my entry way that I love to decorate for different holidays, but I've come to realize that I needed something generic to display when there wasn't a major holiday close by.  This year I had my Easter decorations up until the 4th of July just because I had nothing else to put up, so this is what I've been working on:  Some wooden blocks that spell out FAMILY.

The blockes are 3" square.  First I sanded down all the blocks and painted the edges black.  Then I used mod podge to adhere different patterened black and white paper to each side.  Once that was all dry I attached the letters using mod podge as well.  The letters were just cut out of paper on a cricut machine which was lots cheaper that using vinyl and they turned out great.

Now I've got something to display on my table other than patriotic decor until Halloween comes around.

Being a Mom

Dear Lord, it’s such a hectic day

With little time to stop and pray

For life’s been anything but calm

Since you called on me to be a mom

Running errands, matching socks

Building dreams with building blocks

Cooking, cleaning, and finding shoes

And other stuff that children lose

Fitting lids on bottled bugs

Wiping tears and giving hugs

A stack of last weeks mail to read

So where’s the quiet time I need?

Yet when I steal a minute, Lord

Just at the sink or ironing board

To ask the blessings of Your grace

I see then, in my small one’s face

That you have blessed me

All the while

And I stop to kiss

That precious smile.

                                       -Author Unknown

Earring Holder

For months this earring holder has been on my list of projects to complete.  Last week I took my daughter to get her ears pierced, so today we finally got around to creating a place for her to keep track of her earrings.

I started out with a picture frame from IKEA and a sheet of plastic stuff with holes in it cut down to size (don't even know what it's called)

I assembled the frame and then used little round stickers to get a polka-dot look.  For the frame with just white polka-dots I put the stickers on, then spray painted it blue.  For the frame with brown and white polka-dots I put some stickers on, spray painted it brown, added more stickers, then spray painted it blue.  Once all the paint was dry I simply peeled off the stickers and dropped the plastic into the frame.

Now we have some cute earring holders for our earrings.  I love the way they turned out.