not a total slacker

I'm not a total slacker, we had FHE, I just didn't post it. I made this memory game from www.apleasantsunday.blogspot.com with photos I hijacked from the deseret news of the apostles and prophet. Then I did just what she did and covered them in scrappy paper and then I laminated them. We played several games of memory and several games of go fish. Ty's just enough older that he gets memory a lot better so Jesse liked go fish better. It was fun getting the boys to prounounce their names and get them learning the faces of the apostles. Of course they have President Monson down as well as Elder Bednar since he's our cousin and they've met him once and everyone in the fam talks about him. They were starting to remember some of the others too.

52 weeks of FHE

So I've come to the realization that I'm a bit of a slacker when it comes to things like family home evening and family prayer, scripture study. You know those important things that you're supposed to teach your children. I have lots of excuses, whether they even border on good or not is debatable. My biggest excuse is that Josh and I both work shift work, opposite each other and we rotate so the kids don't go to day care and our schedule changes day to day and week to week. I know, bad excuse! SO I set a goal that we are going to have family home evening every week. We will have to change the day each week based on our schedule so we're not going to be a traditional monday night fam, but at least we'll be having it right? We're also going to work on family prayer, regardless of who is home at night. So the goal is 90% on the FHE. And for a little more motivation (I don't want to feel like an idiot) I'm going to post them here. If I don't have it I'll feel dumb that you all know I didn't so I will....right? Let's hope so. I didn't want to post it on my regular blog so here is where we'll go.

We started tonight! I found a cute website with lots of FHE ideas here. We did the "Satan's Web" lesson in honor of halloween. It was so cute. The boys built a web with yarn and pins. Then we put things in the web that Satan uses to "catch" us. The boys helped Tracen come up with something for him too...they think he needs to work on hitting. He mostly played with the pins and rolled the ball of yarn around. The boys really wanted to come up with happy things too so we put things we could do instead on the side. The boys said they really liked it and had fun. Jesse wants a picture to hang on his wall.

For our activity we carved pumpkins. Tracen mostly watched. Both boys had vampire fangs on their pumpkins



Then for our treat we had roasted pumpkin seeds. It was lots of fun! Next week will come a lot sooner. I think the only day we'll all be home together is Monday. We're going to talk about being nice to eachother because we struggle with that!

Really not not doing anything

I just haven't posted anything that I've been doing!

My house was in need of some serious decorations so I went to work. I love my cricut. Cricut + vinyl = cute stuff on my walls. I'm cheap and I don't have a bedroom set so instead of a headboard I came up with this. I think it's cute anyway, who needs a headboard? I got part of the idea from the Nester. I went and bought a sheet of foam which I cut into 12x12 squares and then painted the sides blackish brown. By the way this is a lot more work than I thought it would be. Paint doesn't slide easily onto foam. After that was dry I raided my stash of scrappy paper, which is sufficient, and found these papers that matched my wall. Then I modge podged them onto the foam. I have a love hate relationship with modge podge. I can never get the wrinkles all the way out. When it dries it is always warped in the end. But it works for me.

It took my a minute to figure out how I was going to get these cute squares to attach to my wall. What I decided was two nails per square. It doesn't matter if they're centered or anything as long as they're both where the square goes because the two nails combined will hold it any way you put it up. I put one approximately at the top and one approximately at the bottom (this is scientific). Then I eyeballed it and stuck the squares into the nails and wahlaw, they stuck. I do occasionally have one fall off but I just stick it back on.

Then I made the cute saying with the vinyl and stuck it across the top. and we're done!

Here's some more vinyl I did. I had this saying up in my old house and I loved it. So I made me anew one. And I love the bird by the way. If you're going to put something above your stove just make sure you clean all the grime off first so it'll stick good. Since my walls were newly painted I didn't have much grime at the moment to clean off!

I've done a few other projects I just need to take pictures of and post. My computer died so I only have one when Josh is home and lets me use his. So I'm getting behind :) The next one I'll post is this dresser. It's so much cuter now! And I got it for free.

Slacker

So it's not that I haven't done any projects, although they've been few and far between. I just haven't posted them. I'll get right on it!

2 more layouts

I'm running a challenge series over at Storytellers so I'm getting lots done!

This one is a StoryTellers kit that I designed...one of my favorites.

This is Tracen on his blessing day, I used Shabby Princess express yourself kit

Digital Scrapbook pages

Here's some of my latest pages. They're all digital because all my paper is boxed up :) These were all done for the layout a day challenges over at Storytellers club.

Two page layout, 10 months of you:

Shabby Princess kits

I actually created the pieces for this kit, even though I only used the one tag on this layout.

Kit from Storytellers club

Tracen fell asleep this way in his crib :)

Kit Spontaneous delight by C. Stephens
A pink page about Josh :)
Kit from Storytellers club.

Happy Boy

Kit from Storytellers club.

Homemade bed skirt

The Nester is one of my favorite people to steal cute ideas from. I stalk her blog regularly. She has this great philosiphy that says "It doesn't have to be perfect to be beautiful" LOVE that. She does these window "mistreatments" that don't require any sewing...pretty much just hot glue and cute fabric and some upholstery tacks. This totally works for me because I hemmed my choir dress in high school with packing tape (sorry Aunt Gaye!).

I'm in the process of my mistreatments for my bedroom windows but since our poor little bed has been hiding in the basement of our house in Cedar she didn't see much improvements or love. So now that she's right off the kitchen in our Master bedroom (old house didn't have a master bedroom) I want her to look pretty :)

So I gave her a little lift (we would have totally hit our heads on the ceiling if we'd done this before). Now I can store stuff under my bed too.

I didn't want everyone to be able to see all the beautiful boxes under my bed and the books in holding up the middle (I forgot I needed two more lifts) So I decided to make the skirt. I had read all about gathering stitches and other nonsense on the internet for making my bedskirt. I decided I didn't have time for all of that so I took the Nester way out. I didn't sew. I was going to use my staple gun, but I lost her. So I went down to H&R (love that store) and bought me some quilting pins (the big push pins you use to hold a blanket onto quilting boards.

I ran into a problem though, the hard stuff on my box spring is just cardboard, doesn't hold pins well at all! No worries though I just pinned it every foot or so where a board did exist...looked a bit like this.

Oh look there are my raw edges...I hid them, doubled up the fabric by folding it long ways and pinned the raw edge to the bed, the edge on the ground looks great.

And then I just tucked it in: (Sorry my bed needs to go on a diet, the sheets don't cover the whole thing)

And now I have a pretty brown bedskirt. By the way it cost less than $20 with 10 yards of 1.50/yd fabric from Wally world and some push pins.

Digital scrapbooking

I love digital scrapbooking. I'm not so great at it yet but I really like it. No mess and it can go with you anywhere. That being said, I doubt I'll ever give up my paper either!

Jesse's first wrestling match

Tracen...aww he's so cute!
Our trip to the zoo when we were in Virginia...forever ago (I'm behind!)

Jesse makes the cutest cowboy, he totally posed for these :)