i think i like this

I'm not sure, but I think I like this bedding.  I definitely love the creative spin.  I don't think I would put it in a master bedroom but I can see it in my boys bedroom or maybe even a fun, off beat guest room.

To see more pictures of this unique bedding click HERE.

keeping busy

Saturday always seems so busy around our house.  I woke up early while the rest of the family slept in and recovered from our family room sleepover.  I managed to get my grocery shopping done and then came home, grabbed the girls and off we went to the local farmers market.  We loaded up on produce - the boys were thrilled with the carrots.  They love eating carrots with the stems still on them - it cracks me up.  

We spent the rest of the day doing a ton of house work.  We cleaned out rooms, took one of Emily's beds out of her room (she had 2 twin beds).  She is so excited to have more floor space and is making big plans for what to do with the extra space.  We installed book shelves in Megan's room to store her multitude of books, and we made a trip to the dump to get rid of all the "treasures" that had been hiding in our home. 
Emily had a couple friends over to watch Camp Rock  - a Disney made for TV movie and not a very good one I might add.  After Emily's friends left the 2nd round of kids showed up with Megan's friend's coming over at 10 pm to watch the same movie - they have the same opinion as I do about the movie, not Disney's finest.  It was a night full of friends, bad movies and pizza and when everyone hit the pillow that night we were out.

party chair

I so want a table full of chairs like this one - all with different numbers.  What a great way to seat party guests.  I'd even love numbered chairs for my family although the one picture above is more party for my taste it doesn't say everyday to me.  

I've had my eye on these chairs from Pottery Barn for awhile but just can't justify spending the money when I already have black dining room chairs.  I thought about stenciling numbers on my existing chairs but there is not enough room on the back rest.

how cute is this?

An index file cutting board - love this design!  This is just too cute.

how much toilet paper must a kid use?

Are my kids the only ones that use half a roll of toilet paper to take care of business?

We got invited to a friends house for dinner (yeah for friends that take care of us) and then went straight to Pack Meeting.  When we got home I went upstairs and walked into my bathroom and had my feet covered in water.  Derek was at a church meeting and I had no idea what to do. I turned off the water, threw down some towels, had a bit of a cry (did we really need to add to the home stress?) and called Derek.  He had finished his meeting and was on the way home. 

When Derek checked it out we found that the toilet had been clogged and overflowed.  I think we caught the problem fairly quick so no permanent damage was done.  We are grateful that it happened now since we are planning on replacing all the flooring in our house as soon as the kitchen is done.

dinner, dinner anyone?

our kitchen BEFORE

Our kitchen is gone - so gone. Where our kitchen once was is now a big, empty room with cold concrete floors, ugly walls with some dry wall missing, lots of spider webs and a continuous cold breeze because of a broken kitchen window.

The window you ask...I spent part of yesterday afternoon harping on Derek about being careful around the window - I was worried he was going to break it. When he had finally had enough of me he quietly put his tools down and walked away to go find another job (I am assuming he went looking for the job that was farthest away from his crazed wife who was so sure he was going to break the window) I took over the job of carefully removing tile from around the window. I felt much better now that I was in control of the job knowing that I would be much more careful then Derek....CRACK! I guess I got a little heavy handed with the hammer and now I was to blame for the destroyed window. After a few minutes of complete shock I burst into tears and locked myself in the bathroom for a minute to compose myself. Derek was waiting with a hug and some comforting words "glad it was you and not me" So now we get a nice new window to go with our nice new kitchen.

The demo took about 3 hours and wouldn't have happened without the help of good friends. The Wrights, Hawkins and Smiths came over and went to town with sledge hammers, crow bars, etc. I can't even begin to tell you how much we appreciate them and all the work they did.

We now have our refrigerator sitting next to the sofa in our family room. We may never move it back to the kitchen because the current set up makes it very easy to grab the Ben and Jerry's out of the freezer without ever leaving the comfort of the sofa. Next to the fridge is a folding table to hold our crock pot, electric skillet, paper plates, paper cubs, etc. This will serve as our kitchen for the new few weeks. We are hoping that people will take pity on us and invite us to dinner so we won't have to use our make shift kitchen. We must seem fairly pathetic because today was our first full day without a kitchen and we had dinner tonight at a friend's house.

I am feeling nervous about this whole remodeling thing - wondering if I made good choices for cabinets, counters, appliances, etc. I wish I could enjoy the whole process more but if I am being completely honest it is just making me way stressed out. Derek is handling it all very well and trying to keep me sane. He has been amazing with finding all the things I want. For instance he found the sink I liked but it was on the pricey end for our budget. He spent hours searching for it on the Internet and found the exact sink plus an amazing faucet all for less then the original price of the sink. He gets a gold star for all his work on this project.

Here is just a few pictures from the beginning of demo. I ran out of room on my camera so Rona went home and grabbed her camera to document the day. As soon as I get pictures from her I will post them so that everyone can see the progress we are making.

     Rona and me trying to look busy

Derek getting ready to take down the first cabinet

quick update...

Here is the latest...

• You are all painfully aware that we got a new computer and now do nothing but make highly embarrassing videos and take crazy pictures.
  
• I gave my Stake Conference talk last Saturday and now my sick, flu like stomachache that I had for 3 weeks is gone.
• Sunday, Derek was called to serve on the High Council at church.
• I am in the process of packing up my whole kitchen so that Derek and I can demolish it this Saturday.  We are completely gutting it so that work can start Monday on the new kitchen.  This will mean one of two things - you will not see posts from me for awhile because I will be busy with kitchen jive or you will see numerous posts from me because I will use the blog as my outlet for all the stress the kitchen will cause.
• The kids are all healthy and happy.  Megan is getting ready to start Road Shows, Emily is busy enjoying tweendom, Nate is loving the Wii from Santa, Luke is always busy making us laugh.

That is all I can think of at the moment.  No, I still have not downloaded pictures but I will (eventually)  I will try to get back to posting more then crazy videos soon.

lots to do

We are still busy with home improvements as we ready the house for Nathan's baptism - sorry for the lack of posts. We finally finished up the bathroom downstairs - we do need something to hang on the bare walls but other then that it is done. Now we have moved on to the fun tasks of cleaning baseboards, walls and doors. Does everyone with kids have gross doors or is that just us? The fingerprints are unbelievable!

We have had a lot going on here - end of the school year activities, fun family outings, etc. I will get back to posting after this weekend to update y'all (mission slip) on the latest happenings.

Thought I'd post this picture...I love it! It happens to be taken at one of my favorite places. Any ideas?

craziness

Our life seems a bit hectic. Nathan's baptism is in a week and we have been working hard to get the house ready for visitors. We have cleaned out our garage, gotten the yard spruced up, painted, installed crown moulding, organized, etc. but as I sit on the sofa typing this & I look around the house - it's somewhat of a mess - why is that? Why do big projects always make the house messy?

Derek has been amazing with all the house prep. He comes home every night after work and starts in on a project and then does even more on the weekends. He worked on the crown moulding into the wee hours last night. How thankful I am for him and how nice it is to be getting some of our projects done that we have wanted to do for awhile.