My Life & Times #1

A few weeks ago I was talking with a good friend about most embarrassing moments and I realized that I have just a few quality experiences in my life.  It got me thinking.  A lot of my experiences are most likely preserved in a journal somewhere, I'm sure. But others I'm not so sure.  So I decided to record them for all to enjoy. 

So, enjoy!

They will be written in no particular order or schedule.  :)

This first one comes from my second summer home from college.  My best friend Cherilyn and I were attending the local singles branch which ended up surprisingly to be really fun.  We had made a few friends and decided to attend a BBQ at the branch president's home.  We arrived and walked through the house to the backyard where everyone was eating and playing.  I walked out on the deck and saw friends playing football out in the yard.  I made the universal sign of "Pass it Here!" and started to slow-motion run across the deck just to be funny. (I know. I'm hilarious.)

Now here's the moment I do not remember, because I saw the edge of the deck, my mind said "stop," but my body just did not respond. I ended up head first over the side of the rail-less, 5 ft tall, deck straight into the 5 ft tall bushes.  And I was stuck, feet flailing, arms pinned.  And to my luck these particular bushes had 2 inch long thorns in them.  So not only was I stuck head first but I was punctured on all sides by this man eating monstrosity.  Of course friends came to my rescue, but it only made it worse.  Legs, feet, hair, arms were grabbed in attempts to set me free only to drive the thorns in deeper.  It didn't help I was laughing my head off out of embarrassment and the sheer absurdity of it all. 

I finally got pulled out.  And I remember nothing about the rest of the BBQ. . I must have blocked it all out.  I must have sat in a corner nursing my puncture wounds and my pride. 

I did not go on many dates that summer.

Spring has sprung

This has been the second sunniest, driest spring in Portland's history.   And I love it.   Parks have been played at, Slurpees have been slurped, and legs have tried to tan.   This week the rain has come back but the weeks of sun and warmth stay in my heart. :).

We've spent many 'a afternoon at the park near our house. One day Jonah joined right in with a group of kids rolling down the hill.  I remember being able to do that... before my old, rickety bones feel every bump and rock.  Some times it's sad being an old mom.  I know 38 isn't "old" but it's too old for me to be rolling down a hill with my preschooler.

I had to laugh because he tried and tried to get a roll going, but then just ended up running every time.  It'll come with maturity.

We also went swimming.  A lot.  Ok, the boys went swimming a lot.  With a new pool just 1 minute from our house it's been easy to pop over and play for an hour or so. 

Jonah took diving lessons one night...  (I messed up the videos and now have all the right ones.)





 

Jonah took the "dive" into his own hands.  

 

 

Face plants don't seem to bother him.

 

Crazy boys.

 



Tualatin the Beautiful

Driving home from cub scouts today...

Jonah: David, where do you live?
David (cubscout): I live in the Fox Hills neighborhood.
Jonah: You live in the Fox Hills Neighborhood??!!  We live in the Fox Hills Neighborhood!!  Yes, it's such a beautiful piece of America.

Project Rundown

When I decided to make the headboard and bed, my sister just shook her head and said, "O-of course you did." :)

I found a great tutorial on Addicted 2 Decorating, and yep, it was a lot of work but not complicated.  I cut my bed budget by half so I felt it was worth it.  Kristi, the tutorial lady, made a king sized bed so I just used all her measurements. You can check out her great tutorial {HERE.}



Hers

Mine

I bought a large plywood board at Home Depot, as cheap as I could get, and had them cut it to my measurements.  Love that!  Pieced and then glued 2 in. foam onto it. That was the most expensive part!  Foam core is not cheap people.   Even with a Joanns coupon.  Then I measured out my button holes.  I didn't want to do nearly as many tufts as the tutorial did, so I widened my lines and spread the buttons out even further.  I still ended up with 40!  I trimmed out the holes so that the fabric would lay deeper into the cushion. Tedious but it was the look I was going for.  Another tedious part was to cover all the fabric buttons.  And of course since I used thicker decorator's fabric, the buttons wouldn't snap together like they should.  So I ended up hot glueing them all.  Fun times.  But it went fast if you do it while your mindlessly watching a movie.

I just followed the tutorial by laying quilt batting on top of the foam, then laid down my navy linen and sweetly asked Aaron to help nail-gun the buttons in place. 

I hung the head board on the wall with this things-ma-jingy, making sure to screw at least two screws into the studs.  And it works perfectly.

Hangman Products HP-30 Heavy-Duty Mirror and Picture Hanger, Aluminum, 30-Inch

 

Instead of a box spring and bed frame we bought one of these.  Foam mattresses need a different support than a box spring and this works great.  Especially since the legs a re extra long and so instead of having 6 inches clearance under the bed, we have 14 inches to store our junk.

I finished off the bed by sewing strips of cloth and adhering them straight to the bed frame with sticky Velcro. 

 

 

And that, my friends, is our bed.

 

 

 

You might recognize the lamp from our family room..

 



But since the walls were white and the chair white, I wanted to changed it up a little.  I thought about spray painting the whole thing but then decided just to accent it.

Just taped it off and applied some of my good ol' Buff 'N Rub.  It's the same thing I did on the hardware of our nightstands and the bases of our IKEA lamps. 

Silver to gold.  Easy.

I was also looking for a small table to put next to our great reading chair.  I knew I wanted something like this....



But everything I looked at ranged from $90-$175 and everywhere in between.  More than what I wanted to spend,.  Then TJ Maxx sweeps in with a sweet find..  Rummaging through their clearance section I find this beauty for $39.95.

I had originally wanted it white, (I know, enough with the white) but with everything else being white, I knew I wanted to bring in a different color,  So I chose the navy blue.  Primed it with the grey and then gave a good 6-7 coats of the blue.

 

 

Not sure how I like the blue but both Aaron and Lucas said they like it, so it stays. 



 

I sewed the curtains.  Even lined them with black out fabric.  Love it!  Now I need to get some up in Jonah's room so he's not getting up at the crack of dawn.

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.Ok, blog has decided not to load any more pictures tonight.  Ok, well. You know what the curtains look like.

I'll have to add the two slipcovers I went through trying to find a decent "coral" color.  Ended up being too much color for my taste.

 

Anyway, I'm tired.  My bed is calling.

Master of the House

This has been my latest project and one of my biggest. I actually started it last September and just now getting all the finishing touches.  Now I'm not taking all the blame for it taking quite so long.  I'll tell you why, but first here is the before of our master bedroom...

 

We've has the queen bed forever but Aaron wanted to upgrade to a king, thus the impetus to decorate the master.  But before I got pictures, our memory foam mattress came and we had no where else to put it but our floor.

 

 

View from the master bath.  I know.  You're wondering, "Does that kid ever wear pants?!"

No. Not really.

 

To start this decorating saga, I found a bed.  A teal bed. This one to be precise.

 

Now normally I am quite conservative with my color.  Especially with furniture.  Buy classic, neutral furniture that will outlast any trend that can be "colorfied" with accessories. But I found this bed and

wanted it. 

It was a great price and so I bought it. This got my creative juices flowing.

5 weeks later it arrived! Bu-ut came in the wrong color.

Sent it back with many a' frustration with Amazon

 (two boxes, one packing slip, 5 visits from UPS. Long story.)

Anyway, we reordered.

5 weeks later it arrived again!!  Bu-u-ut came with a different color and fabric headboard than the side boards.  Blerg.  I know.  First world problems.  Boo-hoo me.  But still chapped my hide. 

By this time, we'd had enough and just canceled the order.

But during the 10 weeks waiting on said bed, I had planned the entire room around it.  Teal, raspberry and gold.  A little crazy bold, right?  But I was loving it and I was SO sad the bed wasn't working.

Anyway, to make sum up, I decided to make a bed because I couldn't find exactly what I wanted and I could save $400..  Shopping for fabrics took a while because I then couldn't find a reasonably priced teal linen. 

But I did find navy blue.

And to try and not describe any more of my very long and tedious creative process, I basically changed my colors to navy, coral and gold. Resulting in said bedroom....

 

 We're going to hang the TV on the above wall for the 4-5x a year we watch TV in our bedroom. :)  (I guess he does wear pants every so often.)

 

I know it's still missing something.  A rug to ground it all or more lighting or something.  Not quite sure yet.   But I felt the need to post my projects and there is 'a many in this room. I thought I'd share the grand pics today and maybe break down a few projects tomorrow.

I painted both the lamp and the ceramic table.  I tried dyeing a slip cover for the chair. Twice. But it just did NOT work out as planned.  It's still coverless.  (I'll show you the two dyeing attempts so you can have a good laugh. Aaron is so patient with me. :)

I changed all the hardware from silver to gold with a little "Buff 'N Rub." Easy peasy.

The great 1960's dresser is a hand-me-down from my in laws and I still love the lines.  We put Aaron's in the corner of the closet for more room out here.
 

Someday we're going to literally gut this bathroom and start over.  The thought makes me giddy because I have divine marble/glass tile/double shower/claw-footed bathtub plans.  But that's a whole other can of worms not to be opened quite yet.

I added flowers from Michaels and made pillows with fabric from Spoonflower.

 I have fabric for a third colored pillow to add another layer of color and pattern but Aaron might protest. To him there is a very fine line between nice accents and this...

 

To him, it's just more work to get into bed and to make it in the morning.  We'll see.

I bought this golden owl from TJMaxx during their Halloween clearance sale last year for $3.  It's actually translucent and has an internal purple strobe light that you can turn on.  Can we say dance par-tay?!

I decided to put this mirror over the bed instead of the string art. Looks mucho better.

 

Again before....

And somewhat after. 

Tomorrow, or let's face it, sometime next week, I'll post a few of the projects I did.  And I'm gonna keep looking for the magic piece that will make this room feel complete to me.  It's not there yet.  So close...but not quite there.

Suggestions??

Quotes of the Week

Random Jonah quotes that have made me smirk this week...

Jonah to his bowl of cereal: "Come to papa!"
To me as we're getting ready for bed: "Today was so ADORABLE!"
Jonah to me as he invited me to battle: "Come here, old man!"
Snuggling up to a blanket his grandma made when he was born and uses all the time: "This is SO lovely, Mom.  It's just so lovely."
To himself as he jumps from rock to rock.: "I AM SO PARKOUR!" 

This is parkour.  :)

 

A few random moments from our quiet, calm conference.

"I'm now a dentist.  No, really.  I am a dentist."  I was getting my teeth checked, and Bob (my brother in law's father who is an awesome dentist) let him help and hold the "sucky" thingy in my mouth.  He thought it was the greatest thing ever!  And when they handed me my appointment reminder card for my next visit, he took it as his official card stating he was a dentist.  So proud of himself!

And for your viewing pleasure,  a dance in his underpants.  With a plastic spatula..

 

Ok. Two videos.

Just underpants is a common phenomenon around here.   I think it's a boy thing. 

Love this kid.  He loves life, loves to talk and loves his mama.

Spring Break: Rated E for Everyone

As we went one way convertible-ing around Phoenix, our two lovelies drove out to Prescott with their grandparents. 

 

 As luck would have it, cousins came out as well so they had one big party all week long.

My Uncle Lloyd and my father built an amazing water table where the kids spent hours playing, building cities, creating their own monetary system, bartering and trading to create a quite a working community.

Jonah and Pax went shirtless most of the week, which is quite common most days. At least here there was sun and a little more warmth.

Each day my wonderful mother and sisters planned an Easter activity that taught the kids about Christ's last week and His teachings.

They celebrated the Feast of the Passover with a Seder dinner filled with unleavened bread and bitter herbs.  Lucas doesn't seem too excited about the endeavor.  Now that I look at the picture, doesn't seem like any one is. 

My dad took the older boys out shooting just like he did when I was a girl.  We shot at cans and the "groundhogs" that made holes in my grandfather's horse pasture that made it dangerous for his horses. I put groundhogs in parenthesis because I don't any of us girls came even close to shooting something alive. 

These boys have shot at cans, gingerbread houses days after Christmas, and I don't know what else.  Lucas loves the 22 and would not mind in the least to get one for his birthday.

My sister would send cute update pictures of the boys and, I have to admit I missed these sweet faces and all the fun they were having without us.  (But then I'd take another sip of my pina colada and all those thoughts would just melt away.)

We did make it up to Prescott for an Easter egg hunt and finding their baskets.  At first, Jonah was intent on getting his hands on as much as he could.

But after some good finds, he said he had enough and was content with the amount he had.  Definitely does not get that from me!

 

Lucas and Jack are always good at finding their goodies early and then helping the little kids out.  This year was no different.

 

What a cute gaggle of grandchildren.

And what cute brothers. I know I am such a sappy mom, but my heart just swells when I think of these two. They bring such joy and craziness to our lives.  I couldn't ask for more!

One more thing...the grownups ventured out to the water park one day with all the kids.  My "lucky" mom convalesced from her knee surgery with her sister who had a knee replacement.  Their day was much calmer than everyone else's,

Cousins and best friends.

 

Jonah has two bathing suits.  One that fits and one that doesn't.  Guess which one I couldn't find before we left? And guess who forgot to send a safety pin with this kid so his stinkin'  bloomers would stay up?  My sisters did their best by adding a swim diaper to his little bum but nothing really seemed to work.

Apparently he didn't really mind,

Lucas especially loves Prescott and was soaking in the peacefulness the last night we were there.  I so appreciate my parents who are willing and able to care for our children while we have Romantic Times.  I love that they have a sweet relationship with both sets of grandparents. They give them a better sense of identity, who they are and where they came from.  It helps them find their place in the world and how they fit in, and are a vital contributor to our eternal family.  

 

Thanks again, Nana & Papa! We sure love you!