Oh what a coat of paint can do!

We "inherited" some furniture recently (thank you Dees) and we were told we could sell it at an upcoming garage sale or keep it. We opted to keep the lamp base and end table. I figured with a little TLC, they could be pretty neat-o. I wish I would have taken before pictures, but the lamp base was just a dark wood with gold trim, same with the end table. Kind of beat up and really dated. They had gotten them at the DI for super cheap. No need to go into much detail, I just primed them both and then painted and stained or sanded to make it look a little more distressed. I found the lamp shade at the DI for $2 and decided to get creative with it. Not so sure I like it, but hey, for only 2 bucks, I can afford to not like it for now. Either way, it is sure a fun thing for me to do.





Tonight I made Cafe Rio Salad! Yummm. I was doubly excited to make it this time around because I had my very own cilantro from these little beauties, grown right here in our windowsill. It could just be my pride, but man, did that cilantro taste good!!


And, Miles ate a half of a crayon the other day. It was blue, and apparently delicious.

No Creative Title Ideas

Maybe I'm compulsive this way, but I like every post to have a specific theme. It seems like lately, all my posts have been a little bit of this and a little bit of that, and I guess I'll just have to cope. In the mean time, you don't get any witty post titles full of clever puns...

A favorite thing that I did this week was make myself a little flower garden. Some flowers that we started were getting too big for their start box, so I took some old ice cream and yogurt containers and old cans, watered down some glue, painted it on the containers, and then stuck some paper around them. So easy, but I'm totally smitten. I placed them on our enormous windowsill and feel like I helped beautify a teeny-tiny corner of the world.



Older than Miles age kids would get this more, but Miles still got a kick out of it. I did it with my 1st graders when I was student teaching to help them with their spelling words in a more tactile way. Just sprinkle some salt, sand, corn meal, anything grainy on a pan, and let them go to town! I tried tracing letters with Miles, but he was more interested in just playing with it. Totally fine. But it's way more fun if you can get it out of the pan and all over the floor right?




We took Miles to a play place thing in Rexburg on Friday night. Don't let this picture fool you, he got to really like it after the first time through. It was something new, and that is always a nice feeling.



I swear I didn't put him up to this. I walked in, and there he was, scrubbing our toilets. "Cinderelly! Cinderelly!" He thought it was quite entertaining, and hey, I can't complain. Ok, I need some suggestions. When he was about 11 months, he went through a short-lived hitting phase. It subsided gradually, but our sweet little boy has been taken captive by a controlling, demanding, parrot of a 15 month old. ??? He just picked up "No!" except it sounds like "Mo! MOMOMOMOMOMO MO!" While furrowing his brow and shaking his finger at us. He also likes to hit us with golf balls and kick us in the tummy while changing his diaper. He's very determined and gets this certain look on his face like "I'm going to get what I want. Go ahead, try and stop me." How do you deal with this???

Thank you again "Family Fun"

I am not so good at coming up with ideas on my own, which is why I'm so glad there are tons of blogs etc out there to help me out. I found another fun idea in Family Fun magazine I thought I'd share. We made paper pizza! We just used old paper bags and then cut out paper toppings. Ta-Da! Mr. M here made an individualized piece for everyone in his family, and then we transformed an old graham cracker box into a pizza box! Fun, no cost activity. Just my style.



Another low cost activity? Sidewalk chalk! Miles even got in on the action. I'm happy to report that I'm still proficient in hop-scotch.


Here's a shot of "my" boys chillin on the couch. We do have some Movie time during the day to give me a break. :)


Here's a shot of my boys for real. Fabulous Sunday mornings. Sleep in, Richie makes breakfast... so good. This last hair cut, Richie told me to go short. Do you think I succeeded? Can I get a "Hoorah"!?

Best Craft EVER!!!

I found this idea for a wreath while I was doing some blog-stalking and when I realized how easy it was, I knew it had to do it. It cost me all of $0 and I did it in about 1.5 hours while watching THE BIGGEST LOSER last night. Go Sam and Koli!! There are tutorials for all sorts of different kinds on the internet, but for mine, I just cut a wreath shape out of an old cardboard box. Then I got an old book we had (sorry "Encyclopedia of World Religions" I just knew I would never sit down and read you) and tore a bunch of pages out, and cut them in half horizontally. Then I squished them into little poofs, for lack of a better word and hot glued them to the card board! After that, I took a lighter to the edges of some paper to make it stand out a bit more. All I need to do know is hot glue some ribbon on the back, and hang it! I would show you that picture, but for now, that wall is just white, so it doesn't stand out like I would like it to. Eventually, I'm going to paint our room green! yahoo!


We also (in no particular order) attended our good friend Megan's birthday party, played at the park, got sick, and Miles picked up piano playing with his rear. Such a talented little boy.

I TOLD you I was addicted!

We finally finished re-doing our kitchen chairs! I don't think I could be more pleased. Now I won't worry that someone will sit on a screw when they take a rest, or be grossed out when they have to sit on the chair with the mysterious black goo stain. I won't throw a fit when Miles tried to climb on them and puts his face right in the fabric EWWWW!!! And best of all, they look cute. :) They cost us next to nothing since they were here when we moved in, my mom-in-law bought be the cute fabric as an early bday present, and I used some of our left over paint and a neighbors left over paint. The only thing I had to buy was some ribbon to put on the bottom of the backs to cover some unsightly staples. I'd venture to say I'm proficient with a staple gun now. I swear I took a BEFORE shot! I can't find it on my camera anywhere! So you'll just have to believe me that these chairs were pretty nastified. But here's the glorious after!




So here's our semi-redone kitchen nook area thingy. There should also be our wedding picture under the "Families are Forever" sign, but it fell off the wall the other day and shattered. Sad. I hope we can fix it. See those little orange bowls sitting on the table? Here look closer.

I found these little yellow and orange bowls and plates at Wal-Mart yesterday. I'm still on a high about them. Why don't you try and guess how much they cost? If you guessed at low at .25 then you are right! If they're not all gone, I'm totally going back today to buy the rest. Perfect little bday or wedding gift. Just throw in some ice cream toppings and a cute bow and ta-da!

Meet the Marble Run and Mr. M

I'm babysitting for a friend of mine, the fabulous gal who is helping me do all these fun things to furniture, so I watch her 2 little ones on MWF. The smallest one is about 8 months, and Mr. M here is 4. If you're looking for something to do and you're stuck inside because it's April and it's still snowing outside (most ridiculous thing in the world says the girl from sunny St. George) you can create a marble run! I found it in Family Fun magazine. You're supposed to use magnets to hold the paper towel tubes to the fridge, but mine didn't work so we just used tape. He thought it was pretty awesome. Yes! I win for being a good babysitter!!

We didn't really post about Easter,

so in case you're wondering, we had a wonderful Easter. Miles was lucky enough to have 3 Easter Egg hunts! One with the Garners, one with the Fogle's in our ward, and one with our friends the Mitchell's from our old ward! He didn't really get it, but he loved eating the candy!

He has this fetish lately of climbing into small spaces. This is the only good picture I've got so far, but just in the past day he's climbed into a cupboard in the kitchen, the storage space under the TV the houses our DVD's, the cupboard in our bathroom under the sink, and the pan drawer thingy under the oven. Crazy boy. He's also really starting to understand and enjoy coloring! YES!! And he "helped" me make cookies yesterday. Such a busy boy.



I haven't posted much lately because I'm working on another project! The same gal from my ward who helped teach me to paint furniture also showed me how I could recover the chairs in our kitchen! It's turned into quite the ordeal, but they should be lovely once I get them finished this week. I'll post more pictures later!

The Woodside swing team had their final performance of the semester last week, so I thought I'd post a bit. If you can't tell, Richie's the ham in the front in the black sailor suit. :) Allow me to brag a bit, Richie choreographed this dance and coached all the dancers. And this was just one of about 5 or so dances that he's choreographed in the last couple semesters! I wish I could have gotten a better video. It may not look like much, but their feet are flyin. This is a fast song, even for Charleston!

Life is Good

We're always looking for an excuse to visit family, and we found a pretty good reason this past weekend. Richie's sister and her husband were coming to SLC for a baptism, and we just found some couches to buy in Layton! Our old couch was a hand-me-down from Richie's Grandma and it was starting to show some real wear, so we spoiled ourselves a bit by getting a couch and over-sized chair that are new to us, although we bought them used off of ksl.com. Richie's family was nice enough to pick them up for us, haul them all the way up here, and then immediately turn around and drive back to SLC with us. Wow huh!? We love the new couches. We feel like we practically have a new house! Richie's mom also took me to a fabric store to find some awesome fabric for projects around the house including making pillows for our new couch. Don't be too jealous of this fabric. I LOVE it. I think if I could, I'd bathe in it.


We had a wonderful visit with Richie's family! Thanks again!

Richie with his bro Tanner, Miles and Richie's Cousins little boy!


Working in the Garden!


Miles on a pre-Easter egg hunt


Please Sir, I want some more!

Secret Garden

I flew through "The Secret Garden". Why have I never read this book before? I've seen the movie and musical, but the book is pure magic. It teaches so many valuable lessons in my opinion. For instance: Most times, people will act how you condition them to act. Giving people the hard truth, coming from the right place mind you, goes a long way. People who care about others first always seem to have all their priorities straight and seem happier than most people. And of course, playing outside in the fresh air will do more for you than any amount of learning about fresh air.



Speaking of gardens, we're starting one! A couple in our ward has family that has land near us and we're going to do a good sized garden together. We're stoked! Is that still a word cool people use? If it is, then yes, we're totally stoked. If it's not such a cool word, then, we're very excited. We've already started some of our starts. Now it's just time...Hey spring...could you get here and stay here sometime soon? Please and Thanks.

Where's Waldo?

More like where's Miles? Sometimes hurricane Miles hits our house and leaves wreckage strewn about the living room, his room, the kitchen... everywhere. Luckily, Hurricane Miles is fairly easy to clean up after. The only problem is that he sometimes gets lost in the mess. Can you find him?




The weather is being so fickle around these parts. It keeps teasing us, like Spring really might be here, but the next day, we're stuck inside. So when the weather is nice, we take advantage of it. We went to the park the other day and let Miles try out the playground for the first time. He's fearless. He loved it.




The other night, Richie taught swing dance to the youth in our ward. They absolutely ate it up, which was nice. Here's Miles with 2 of the boys we had in our old primary class. They sure love Miles. They even all got together on Miles' birthday a while back, and found us to sing Happy Birthday to him.




Last night for FHE, we were planning to go to the park again, but the weather turned icky, so we made edible play dough instead. It didn't take more than 5 seconds for Miles to realize he could eat it and that he LOVED it. I guess we'll have to wait for a bit for him to enjoy play-dough the proper way. :)

A new love, and an old love

I have a friend in the ward who knows how to refinish furniture etc and recently she offered to help me refinish some of ours! Not just show me how, but she let me use her paint, paintbrushes and disc sander! You have an awesome sister Nicolina! :) Anyway, here's how some of our projects turned out! I LOVE how they look now and now have a new found love of refinishing furniture and painting. I'd better be careful, or this could become an addiction! The owners of the mini storage had some left over paint they said we could use, so we also painted our entry-way this past weekend. Richie was not a big fan of it and when I told him how much fun I was having he said I had to stop watching so many Mormon commercials. :)





In other news, the snow finally melted enough to go frisbee golfing! Richie was extremely excited and couldn't wait until it got warmer, so we bundled up yesterday and went to IF and played some frolf:) We took Miles about 1 year ago in the baby backpack and he didn't really get it for obvious reasons. This year he totally loved it!