My weekend of crafts!

This weekend I wanted to make some new 4th of July (24th of July also for Utah) crafts for my living room. I had some extra pieces of wood so I started with those! Hmmm...what can I make?

Some wood blocks that read U.S.A of course!! A flag as well! I love it!

And I ended with some firecrackers! I love how they all turned out with the deep blue and red colors!

I had also seen an idea for those pesky plastic Walmart sacks that get randomly strewn about in the bottom of my pantry. So I wanted to try what I had seen over at House of Grace. I started with a plain old empty coffee container...

Spray painted it white, added some wording and cut a slit in the lid...Whalaa! Storage for my plastic sacks!

Lastly, I had a fat vase that I had gotten at an auction a while back. I have taken really all blues out of my house, so it really does not match anything...

so I spray painted that white too!

And placed it up on top of my cupboards! I love it!

I am linking up over at the weekly CSI Project!
THIS weeks project is redoing my son's bedroom for his birthday! We gave all of the kids the option for their birthdays this year to either get presents or get a bedroom re-make...and they all chose the bedrooms! We have gotten the prepping done - furniture out, wallpaper border off, walls cleaned...I need to tape tonight and we are going to pick out carpet...hopefully I can get it all done in time! I am pretty sure we will not find any one who can do carpet in a pinch...but I really want to get the rest of the room done by the weekend for his birthday! Wish me luck!! I will show pictures next week! Promise! :)

My Wish List!

I was watching TV the other night and the most fascinating thing came on! The new Dremel Trio!

I have to have it! It cuts, it sands and it routes! For only $100...I must have it!! :)

Birthdays and Father's Day

Last week was Jason's birthday! My hubby turned 37! Man he is getting old...just kidding baby! :)

We had a small bbq with his family. Of course the Laker game was on, so the majority of the time was spent (by the guys at least) in the living room watching the game...as I tended to the grill!

He did not want anything fancy for his b-day cake, just a simple vanilla cake with plain old frosting and a whipped mm pudding filling. So that is what I did. In lieu of any fancy decorations, I just used hershey's kisses and whoppers to decorate the cake! It was pretty yummy!

The kids all had fun jumping on the tramp or playing the drums for the Guitar Hero! :)

Jason did not want to blow out the candles but Brody did so he got up to blow them out for Jason.

Although after about 3 attempts - but no success, Jason blew them out himself!

For Father's Day, we wanted to make Jason a fruit bouquet...so I bought all of the fruit and let the kids go to town! Bowe was not home, he was out golfing with Jason...so the girl's did all the dirty work with the cutting out of fruit!

Bowe did help us stick the skewers in the watermelon the morning of Father's Day! The morning of Father's Day, we all made breakfast for Jason. French toast, fried eggs, bacon, juice and coffee....oh and fruit of course!!It was delicious!!!

I think that Jason really liked all the effort we put into his special days!

We love you babe! Thanks for being such a great husband and father!!!

The next day, Bowe's girlfriend Shay and her 2 brothers (triplets) had their birthday party and I made the cake for them. Here is a shot of their cake! :) They are all basketball freaks, so that is what I made them! For more pics of the cake, see my cake blog {here}!

Better After

Inspired by the site Better After, I thought I would post some of my before's and afters in my home! Let me start out with our downstairs bathroom...man, I WISH I took pictures when we moved in! The bathroom consisted of blue carpet, tan wallpaper that had little blue and black circly designs throughout with a dark blue and black flowery border at the top of the room. This is a small space...and it felt ever smaller! We immediately took all of the wallpaper down and for a temporary fix, I painted the whole bathroom a bright yellow and brought over the fish motif that we had in our duplex before! And that was fine for a while...until the tile in the shower started bowing inward and my daughter busted a hole through it while leaning over while taking a shower! At that point, we knew we needed to upgrade! We took down all of the walls, sheet rock, tile, and yellow color and had it totally re-sheetrocked and a marble shower and marble surround for the window put in...a new window put in...the ugly OLD dark brown cabinet taken out and replaced with a fresh white one...new sink...new toilet...blue carpet replaced with tile...THE WORKS!! I love it! This before pic does not do it all justice, but you can see the yellow paint and the UGLY linoleum that was under the blue carpet! (To see all pics of the bathroom click here)

Next we did the kitchen! The upstairs already had a nice 2 toned paint with crown and base moulding, which looked really nice, so we did not change anything when we moved in. We knew that the cabinets would be something we would want to replace, but a whole kitchen remodel is something you save money for (or file a refi for!!). So we eventually got a refi on the house (which we also used for the bathroom above, central air, updated electrical and a new furnace...not too shabby)! So the kitchen had really shallow dark brown cabinets with no hardware (well besides the copper hinges), and a brownish orangish formica countertop that had little pieces missing in a couple of places, old laminate flooring in the kitchen part and blue marble carpet in the dining part, the kitchen lights were all either brass fixtures or old yellowish track lighting, etc etc! Not a pretty kitchen! The side of the room that our fridge was on has a few shallow cabinets that were really un-usable because they were so shallow and the shelves were not movable so items like cereal boxes would not even fit in! Yuck!! We ripped EVERYTHING out! That was pretty fun to demo the kitchen ourselves...the not so fun part was finding another set of linoleum under the top linoleum and having to scrape and pull at nails for EVER!! But we added new cabinets, new counter top, new paint, new tile floors, new sink, new lights, new over the range micro, new dishwasher (old one leaked), and over by the fridge, we added a deep pantry and a desk! I LOVE IT! Such a tranformation! And we did the kitchen, the bathroom, central air, furnace and electrical all for $20k! I think we did good! (To see more before pics, click here...for more demo pics, click here...and more more after pics, click here) A few months later we decided our kitchen floors looked so good, but they looked TERRIBLE next to the ugly marble blue carpet that was in our living room, hallway and entryway stairs! We picked out the new carpet and thought, hey that ugly dark brown banister would look much better as a pony wall...so we also built in (when I say we, I mean my husband and his mom's boyfriend!) Looks so much better...now we just need to work on replacing the banister in the middle of the staircase from the upstairs and the downstairs! I was so excited to rip up the blue carpets that I forgot to take real before pics...so this pic is Bowe on his 1st day of school last year! You can see the ugly blue floors, the ugly hunter green shelf that I have up on the wall and the cherry finish old sewing table that really does not match anything! This pic shows not only my little girl when she was about 5 years old...but it was really the only pic I had of that ugly banister! Aahhhh...much better! Ugly blue carpet GONE! Now I needed to get rid of the ugly green and lace drapes I had up on an oak colored rod...That is better!The stairs look so much better...and the wall is almost done!I think these decorations look a lot better than that 90's green shelf I had before. And I painted my cute little sewing table a nice black to match all of the frames! Keeping up with the black accessories, I printed out some pictures that I had taken at Laguna Beach and Flaming Gorge and put them in some spray painted black frames...along with a large frame that I also spray painted black and added some vinyl lettering (I love Cricut) to spell out LIVE long LAUGH often LOVE always. And with my new star mirror, I chose to add some accents of stars throughout the room...you cannot see from here, but the tall baskets on the left of the entertainment center have little stars hanging on the little ties.
And since I was also just as good with after pics as I was with before pics...here is our wall all done...and doned with a baby shower garland! ha ha!

Our house looks so much better! Just a few more things to do before it is completely remodeled. I can't wait! Right now we are working on the front yard landscaping and we told the kids they could all get new carpet along with bedroom makeovers for their birthdays this year! Stay tuned! :)

Dance Review and Baby Blessing

This past weekend was my daughter's end of year dance review! This past week was so stinking hectic! Tuesday, she had try-outs for next years competition teams, Wednesday was dress rehearsal, Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights was the review! A lot of time and a lot of dancing! My poor Kaitlyn was pooped! The last 3 days she has slept in until almost 10 am and she is usually up by 7 - 8!!

She just loves this pose that she made up for the end of her tap dance, Shout!Kaitlyn in her ballet dance outfit! She is such a little beauty!Putting on her lipstick...it looks like a real bridal shot! :)We did find out yesterday however, that she made the next level up comp team! Yeah Kaitlyn! I am so proud of you!! Sunday, my niece Alexis was getting blessed! I made this cake for the lunch afterwards!

Next up this week...my son has a baseball tournament each night this week...we are still getting ready to move at work...we are still doing some demo landscaping on our front yard (more on that one in a later post)...and my husband's birthday is this weekend! Bring it on! :)

Have a great week!!