Winter Basketball

Harrison did basketball for the first time this winter.  He really enjoyed it, and his skills went from barely being able to dribble, to having a pretty good understanding of the game, rules and how to do some basic shooting, defending, and setting a pick.  It was pretty hilarious to watch at times.  The kids would really move in a herd sometimes, and there was a serious advantage if you happened to have hit an early growth spurt.  There were a few kids that would be like a foot taller than anyone on the court, and they would totally dominate the game. 

I took some video of his last game. Harrison is number 3. You can turn down your volume - there's some background conversation going on. But this video really got Harrison at his best - first defense - blocking a shot, then offense, taking a shot (and missing) and then setting a pick.

He's looking forward to playing again next year. 

My crazy girl

Olivia is so much fun to have around.  She is a crazy girl.  She likes to be laughed at, and will do silly things to get a good chuckle from anyone.  One day she was taking off her shirt (a pretty common occurance) and it got stuck on her shoulders. Her brothers thought this was pretty funny, and told her she was wearing a backpack. She now intentionally does this each time she takes off her shirt, and thinks she is hilarious.

She also has decided that she wants to sleep anywhere but in her bed.  We always tuck her in, and then almost as soon as the door is shut, we hear her get out of bed, and play in her room.  She ends up falling asleep anywhere but her bed.  Like her doll crib:

Or right next to the door: 

(This makes it really hard to actually open the door without hitting her...)

Or really anywhere on the floor:

Curtian panels done!

The curtain panels are done and hanging up! My only regret is that I don't have enough fabric for double wide panels - the window really needs them. But we're thinking of building a window seat here, so maybe it wont matter all that much. For now, it will be fine.

This was another pretty simple project. I found another great tutorial here. Don't you just love the internet? The hardest part was squaring the fabric, and just making sure everything was super straight, and the same length. Here's a picture of what it looked like:

7 yards of fabric is hard to work with! They took me about 2 hours a piece, but again, I was super careful. For me the most tedious part was blind stitching the mitred corners. Have I mentioned I detest hand stitching?

Here's a close up of the beautiful raw silk I got for $4 a yard!

The ring clips were 40% off at Joanns and then I had my 10% off coupon. which made them $5.50 for a pack of 10. We already had the rod from our old house (it's been hanging on the wall for a couple months now. So total cost for 2 panels: $11 for clips, $24 for 6 yards raw silk, $13 for 6 yards lining, $2 for matching thread = $50. Compare with these I found at pottery barn - almost identical, on sale for $118 a piece + $60 for the ring clips, would have cost me $296. So, really, I just saved myself $246. :) I feel the camera getting closer!

Productive Weekend

I think my life may have reached a point where I have time to blog again.  Hopefully I'll get back into the habit, and maybe even find time to post about what has happened in the past 4 or 5 months...

We had a really productive and fun weekend.  Friday Sam was home sick from work, which allowed me to sneak off and get some errands run while Olivia was sleeping and Noah was playing.  Joanns was having a good sale, so I went to go find some home dec fabrics I could use in some projects around the house. Initially I couldn't find anything I liked, but I decided to take a look at some of the red tag clearance, not really expecting to find anything (every other time I've looked it's been pretty hideous.)  There, among many ugly discards, was some beautiful juniper blue raw silk.  On clearance for $4.50/yard.  With my extra 10% off, it was just over $4/yard.  Regularly $30/yard.  I got 7 yards thinking  I could make some curtains for our master bed. When I got home I realized I was crazy not to buy the whole bolt.  So I went back and got the last 5 yards. Kind of kicking myself that I didn't buy it all in one piece.

I also picked up some fabric to do roman shades in Olivia's room - she's had black out fabric stapled to the wall, hanging pitifully over her window since we moved in. Too bad I didn't take a before shot, because it was truly awful. It was the quick fix I could come up with the day we moved in, when I realized there was no way she was going to fall asleep in her brightly lit room for her nap, and it has hung there ever since.

My sister Sarah had made some roman shades for her home, and said it was really easy.  I found a great tutorial which explained it so simply, and it really turned out to be an easy project.  For Olivia's window, the fabric I found was 45 wide, and her window is 46X58, so I had to make 2 roman shades which I hung side by side.  I think my seam allowances were slightly over 1/2 inch, so there is a little bit of a gap between the 2 shades, but I still LOVE how it looks.  I started these shades Friday night, and finished them up Saturday morning before we left for Harrison's basketball game.  I think they probably took me less than 4 hours.  And a lot of that time was spent measuring and re-measuring, because I wanted to get them right the first time.  I have learned (the hard way) to measure twice (or three or 4 times) and cut once.  Total cost for this project: just under $34.  ($7 for blackout lining, $15 for striped canvas, $1.5 for rings, $10 for hardware and wood.)  

My favorite part about this particular type of roman shade is how they hang when they are drawn.  The rings are sewn on in varying spacing (reducing the space with each ring) so that the folds create a pleated look.  I really love how they turned out - and I love how easy it was to do. The only thing I did differently than the tutorial was to use my sewing machine to sew on the rings.  I just followed the instructions for sewing on a button, and that made it so much faster than using a needle and thread by hand.  I really detest hand sewing.  I actually did one row by hand, and for some reason the row I did by hand made a noticeable hole in the blackout fabric, so you can see little dots of light on that row, when it's closed during daylight.  So I'm glad I did the rest with a machine. 

When I went back to Joanns to get the rest of the silk left on the bolt, it was already cut in 2 pieces.  2 yards and 3 yards.  I knew the 2 yards wasn't going to be big enough for a curtain panel, but I discovered 2 yards of 54 inch wide fabric was the perfect amount to create a roman shade for the guest room.  And since it didn't have any blinds or window treatments yet, and Sam's parents are coming in less than 2 weeks, I thought it sounded like a great idea.  So I whipped this roman shade up last night:

Here's what it looks like closed.  Perfectly fills the window frame. And with the blackout fabric, it makes the room nice and dark.

 Again, super fast, super easy, and I love the way it turned out. This was even cheaper to build, because of the deal on the fabric - around $28 total.  For silk roman shades.  To cover a 58 X 46 inch window.  Just to compare, I found some here you can order.  Silk roman shades for a window this size would have cost me over $200 on sale.  I have many more plans for places to put roman shades, and now I just need to find the perfect fabrics.  

We also got some good work done on our new kitchen table.  We bought boards a while back, and have been making careful plans for how to put it together.  Ana White's plan for a modern farm house table (almost an exact duplicate of West Elm's Modern Farm Dining Table) is where we started, but we wanted different dimensions.  And Sam got a Kreg-Jig for Christmas from his parents, so we wanted to use that to hide all the screws.  It took some figuring, but we got it done.  This weekend we worked on staining it, and hopefully in a few days we'll be able to do the final assembly in the kitchen. 

Here you can see a before and after of the stain.  We built it out of stock wood (stud grade) from Lowe's.  I think the wood for the table was less than $40.  Screws were another $10.  So, we saved about $450 off the sale price of this table. 

It will be beastly heavy once it's all put together, so we'll put it together where it will stay.  We bought chairs from Ikea back in MD, and then at Thanksgiving, we went back to Ikea in UT and found the stain to match the chairs - which was on super sale because they are discontinuing it.  I hope we have enough - it seems to take several coats to get the dark color that the chairs are, but we've done 2 1/2 coats and it's getting closer.  Just a few more coats, and then a couple of a polyurethane sealer, and it should be ready to go!  The boys are excited because the current kitchen table will become their new lego table once we have our new table finished.  Our new table will be significantly bigger than our old one - we'll be able to comfortably seat 10, so come on over for dinner sometime! 

The other exciting event this weekend was buying our first piano!  We've been wanting one for a while, and now that we have the space, it was just a matter of finding one.  We weren't ready to make a huge investment, since none of us really play, but we wanted a good starter piano that the kids could learn on (and one that we wouldn't have to worry about them destroying...) so we found one on craigslist.  We talked them down to $400 from $450.  It's in need of a good tuning, but all in all in pretty good shape.  It came with a nice bench, which happened to be full of piano lesson books.  Harrison has already made his way through half the primer that was in there (since last night!), and can't wait to have lessons.  I guess I need to start looking for a piano teacher. 

It's a good thing I "saved" so much money this weekend on these great deals.  Because, in case you didn't notice, my camera is in serious need of replacement.  See all the dark corners in the pictures?  My lens no longer closes or opens all the way.  I really want a nice digital SLR when we replace it, so we may just have to a while before we do.  Maybe a few more DIY weekends, and we'll have "saved" enough to get my dream camera.

Valentines day

A few fun/funny things about this Valentine's:

A friend in the ward had a great craft night at her home where she taught us how to make these wreaths:

I got out my banner from last year:

And figured it would be fine to do the same style of Valentine's I used for the kids last year.  New schools, new friends:

I think I earned myself spacey mom of the year award when I confused the days for Noah's Valentine's party, and didn't realize it until I picked him up from school with a bag of Valentine's from his friends.  Thankfully he was not phased by it, and was perfectly happy to bring his on the next school day.  Silly mom.

And I put together a cute little treat for the kid's teachers too (gotta love the dollar spot at target!):

I made cupcake pops in the shape of a heart, and they turned out super cute. I used a heart cookie cutter to form the cake ball into a heart, and then I just stuck a little heart sprinkle on the front. 

And Sam brought home these:

Happy Valentine's Day!